Jesus said, “When you pray, say, Our Father who is in Heaven, Hallowed be Your Name, Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done…”. …and that is the focus of today’s reflection on Prayer.
Most of us will pray in different ways, these days in prayer groups over the internet, or joining in during intercessions in our Sunday worship, or praying in our own personal prayer/meditation times. Sometimes we pray in response to an international or personal crisis - or we may pray regularly for a persistent problem, our church’s, our own or a loved one’s.
As well as an acknowledgement that we trust God’s Will to be perfect when we pray ‘Your Will be done’ we are also praying for change in situations we sense are outside the understanding we have of what the Kingdom of God is.
But when we pray are we actually willing to accept that God may not answer our prayers in the particular way we demand or in the time-frame we expect? Could it be that God’s Will could also include an answer delayed so that we grow in our relationship with God through persevering in prayer? None of us likes waiting for changes in situations that are desperately difficult to cope with. But our pain and frustrations should not blind us to the opportunity for personal growth that spending time in God’s presence, seeking God’s Will, offers us.
Prayer is one of the essential pillars of our Christian faith. Just as a balanced diet and regular exercise maintain our physical health, helping us to recover more quickly when illness strikes, so too regular prayer-time builds our spiritual resilience helping us to be able to cope with the unexpected, good or bad times. When the good times roll it is easy to have faith but our spiritual health is of such importance to God that God’s Will could be that we actually need to learn to patiently wait upon the Lord. Keeping the communication channel open between ourselves and God, through a regular prayer life, ensures we are in the right place to hear God’s voice, and whilst waiting for the answer to arrive, we are also growing in our understanding of what God’s Will looks like when it does.
It is always encouraging when something positive out of the blue happens to us, but how do we know that this is not as a result of someone else’s perseverance in prayer, someone who may not even know yet that their prayers have been answered?
At a very difficult moment in his life Jesus’ prayer was “Not my will but Yours be done.” It is wonderful to think that His perseverance in prayer led to the birth of the Church and all our local churches continue to be part of the answer today. “When you pray say, Our Father who is in Heaven, Hallowed be Your Name, Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done…”, even if that means I need to learn to be patient in prayer. Amen.
Elisabeth Sweeney Smith
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