Reverend Ref +

YEAR C - PENTECOST VIII - PROPER 12
 
Prayer.

That word conjures up all sorts of images.  From the Lord's Prayer of today, to Jesus in the garden, to night time prayers with children, to prayer circles, and even to bartering with God.  Prayer comes in many forms and people who pray have a variety of skills.  Yes, prayer is a skill.

I'll be honest here, if I were to rank myself on a prayer scale of 1 - 10, I'd put myself at about a 4.  I'm not one of the better ones, and I envy those people who seem to have a "strong" prayer life.  Maybe if I was better at it, it wouldn't have taken me so long to get here.  Who knows?

So what exactly is prayer?  Well, let's begin with what prayer isn't.  Prayer isn't a continual wish list of wants that you ask God to deliver.  Like a Christmas list given to Santa, a list of things that you think would make your life better or more fun.  "Oh God, please let me win the lottery.  Please give me a job (although that can be one, but you need to be careful of what job God will give you).  Please help my marriage.  Please help me be better.  Please whatever."

Nor is prayer a continual apology of sins committed.  "Oh God, forgive me for treating so-and-so poorly.  Forgive me for not tithing enough.  Forgive me for drinking too much.  Forgive me for whatever."

Neither is prayer a continual litany of praise.  "Oh God, you are great.  God you are awesome.  God you are good.  God you are wonderful."

Prayer, rather, is a combination of all of these things.  And that bears out in today's gospel.  Jesus, asked to teach his disciples how to pray, shows them.  "Father, hallowed be your name."  Praise.  Give us each day our daily bread."  Request.  "And forgive us our sins . . ."  Repentence.  Prayer is an honest conversation with God.  And it is a daily conversation with God.  That line, "Give us each day our daily bread," wasn't meant to be a one time request, but a daily request.

For those of us in relationships, which is just about everyone here, can you imagine talking to your spouse once a week?  Giving them a list of wants, needs, apologies, and then saying, "I'll talk to you again next Sunday."  Daily conversation is the core of prayer.

Jesus goes on from the Lord's Prayer to give a few examples.  Those examples aside, this daily dialogue comes in the form of Ask, search, knock.  You begin by asking.  This isn't the simplistic asking I mentioned above, but something different.  The more you ask, the more your question gets narrowed and focused.  "Give me a job," moves to, "Give me a job where I can work with my hands," to, "Can I help build houses?"  Eventually, that moves from asking for what I want to asking for what I can do to best help God.

Tied to asking is searching.  In my line of work we call it discernment, and it can take a long time.  You search -- how can I accomplish what I've asked for?  And through that search you will find an answer.  It may even turn out that you were asking the wrong question. 

Finally, you knock.  Your asking and searching have led you to a door that you are ready to knock upon.  And for those of you who think that knocking is easy stuff, go and knock on somebody's door this week and ask them to come to church with you.  But by the time you get to the point of knocking, you will be ready for it.

For those who need some type of example of all this, I offer myself.  In 1996, someone said, "You should be a priest."  I spent alot of time asking questions, of myself, of my family, of my friends, of other priest.  The only priests I had known of were parish priests, and I knew that I didn't want to be responsible for the eternal souls of the people in a congregation.  I mean, what if I got it wrong and these poor people went to hell because of me?  No way.  So I asked, and I found out all the different ways I could be a priest.

Then I searched.  What kind of priest would I be?  Where would I serve?  And the more I searched, the more I came to realize that being in a parish is really where I was called to be.  All of my asking and searching led me to a door.

And in my senior year, I was ready to knock.  I knocked in Oregon, and in Wyoming, and in Libby, and in Anaconda, and in Missoula, and here.  And eventually, the door to this community was opened up to me, and I entered.

Knocking is a risk, but you surround that risk with daily prayer and you figure out where you need to go.  And after all the time of asking and searching, the knocking really doesn't seem like that much of a risk.  But it is, and when you do knock, and the door is opened, you are ready to enter, and through that portal you will never be the same again.

So go ahead.  Pray daily.  Ask God questions.  Check in.  See how he's doing.  See how you're doing.  Say, "I love you."  Say, "I'm sorry."  But talk, ask, search, and take the risk.  It's worth it.