"Good stuff" from Billy Sprague...

I found this while cleaning out some files this morning...thought I'd share.

I don’t know how much or which prayers influence or change God’s mind. I am aware that the Bible says “The Lord is near. Do no be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, present your requests to God…” Perhaps, as CS Lewis maintained, prayer may have more to do with influencing me than God anyway.

I still pray for traveling mercies when a friend leaves on a trip. I pray for troubled marriages to be mended. Some of them are, and some end in divorce. In that event we pray for their kids, or “Dear God, don’t let their wounds be anchors they have to drag along. Turn them to teachers and treasures they can carry with them.”

Prayer is a bulletin board where I post memos to the Almighty. It is not a chess game where I negotiate to get God to see or do things my way. He knows how it looks through my eyes. He knows how to manage a universe. Prayer isn’t a way to see things like He does. It’s a refuge. An oasis of spiritual life. When I don’t go there, I dry up. And brown. Like my yard.

I don’t go very long without water. Sometimes, though, I neglect or avoid prayer deliberately, like ignoring my wife or a friend because of an issue I don’t want to face. But the restless, unnatural isolation of life as a lone ranger draws me back like a thirst. A thirst for intimacy, I suppose. For nearness, acceptance, consolation. Sometimes in prayer, the lightness and calm euphoria return.

The longer I live, the shorter my prayers become. At least the spoken part. Sometimes it’s just stargazing and saying “Thanks for the evening, it was heavenly.” Prayer becomes listening more than petitioning. It is like sitting by a stream. Watching the movement. Unable to read the hieroglyphic of light on the surface, but consoled by it nonetheless. “I pour out my heart like water” the prophet Jeremiah said. Sometimes in tears. Sometimes in anger or confusion. Often in gratitude. Often in silence. Always in longing. I wait. The river of God bends toward me. Or I am moved toward it—toward the presence of God. Whenever this happens, the current carries me. To deep, still water. And I green.