Thoughts on Prayer

Recently I overheard a loved one paying a member of my family a compliment (if you think you know who it is, you don't.  Sorry, kids).  "He/she prays so beautifully", the friend commented.

This innocent anecdote struck a chord with me, and has resonated since then.  It's true, my family member does deliver eloquent, inspiring and genuine prayers.  Perhaps the comment stuck with me so much because I, quite simply, am not a particularly inspiring person when I pray.  I feel awkward praying aloud, I stumble over words, I get caught up in a train of thought or emotion and find myself speeding down the tracks of prayer, a runaway freight train.

And a lot of people feel this way.  Yes, you might be reading this, thinking to yourself, "Self, you also should not pray aloud.  You sound rediculous."

Therein lies the problem.

We've been trained, somehow, by someone (or many, many someones), that prayer is a performance.  In some cases, it's a marathon: "whoever prays the longest gets their prayer answered first."  In others, it's an art show: "whoever ueses the most flowery language gets an extra blessing."  But the way it makes me feel is, God must be truly disappointed when he hears me pray.  He must lament that I didn't spend more time studying my SAT vocabulary words.

The good news is, he doesn't care.  He's no more impressed with my small vocabulary than he is with the next person's expansive one.  He sees the heart, and cares infinitely more about that than a thesaurus-worthy performance.  He's not about performance at all, and truly, he is very difficult to impress.

So, if you're like me, think about this.  Imagine little Samuel (if you don't know anything about him, find the books in the Bible named for him), sitting in his room, hearing the voice of the Lord, and answering innocently "Here I am".  Remember that God wants to have a conversation with you (and yes, he reads minds, so don't worry about the whole speaking aloud thing).  Talk to him.  He just wants to be with you.  Err... me...

That being said, for a change, I'm going to spend some time NOT reading other people's sewing blogs and looking at pictures of other people's adorable children (yes, I've been stalking you), and talking to the Lord.  It's good to be heard.