Prayer and the Present Moment

It’s become a cliché to say that this crisis is ‘unprecedented’. Of course, it is. The initial response for many of us was frantic activism, trying to devise our immediate pastoral response. For me, this involved: setting up a pastoral care system, organising online small groups, uploading regular Bible devotionals on YouTube, feeding homeless people, and supporting my leaders. Inevitably, despite encouraging my leaders to take a day-off, I failed to do so myself! Eventually, I ‘hit the wall’ (to illlicitly use a marathon runner’s metaphor, because I’m not a runner), and had to stop. Spirituality is also about rest.

Our prayer team has continued to meet online throughout the crisis, early in the morning, once a week. We feed in all the prayer requests we receive to them. I worry, however, that we may reach impact overload, as we experience the weight of all the problems we’re told about. Feeling over-responsible for solving all everyone’s issues could actually feed the panic. This could descend into a Pelagian approach to prayer, whereby we think it’s our fervency and passion which ensures the required results. Of course, it’s not our responsibility, but God’s. He is sovereign. He invites us to share his work through prayer. But, we offer up our requests to him, and then leave them with him, trusting that he knows best. This way, confronted with alternating news of bereavements, and also wonderful recoveries from the virus, we can enter the movement of spiritual oscillation of rejoicing with those who rejoice, and mourning with those who mourn (Ro. 12.15). 

Often we realise our personal prayer is rather weak. What we can do, however, is enter into the mystery of prayer already going on in heaven between the three persons of the Trinity (Ro. 8.26 & 34). Prayer is not about us, but about entering into the life of God (Jn. 17.21). When we rest in this truth then we are able to ask according to his will (1 Jn. 5.14). In one of our online small groups, people shared about the blessings of lockdown. Whereas before they may have had a ‘robotic’ job in admin, they now had the opportunity, to be nourished spiritually: reading the word, and listening/attending to God’s voice. Slowing down proved to be life-giving, more profound, even ‘hydrating’, with the living water. Of course, there was also frustration that, despite this provision, paradoxically, often they failed to enter in. Faced with our own fleshiness, we need therefore to be gentle with ourselves, knowing it’s all grace.

I read an article rejoicing in the solitude of lockdown: enjoying the peacefulness, and comparing themselves to the early Christian hermits, who lived in the desert. This was a particularly smug Western self-satisfied spirituality. What they forgot is that the desert exposes our weaknesses. It is the abode of demons, and hermits were inviting spiritual warfare in the wilderness. Instead, scented candles, essential oils, and Gregorian chants on Spotify, were another version of self-centred consumer chillaxing, masquerading as prayer.