Prayer Is A Home

Sometimes presence is enough

Only with my favorite people do I not feel the compulsion to fill the empty space with talking. Filling the silence is great for things like first dates, weddings, family reunions, perhaps reunions of any kind. And filling silence is, at least a good chunk of the time, full of meaningful conversation that delights, entertains, and leads us to new thought. It also sometimes has us talking in circles about the player the team traded or congress. But in environments where I’m surrounded by people that I love and commit my life to, there is a comfortability.

Being around those you love should be home. To be home means that you feel safe and secure, free from the culture of obligation and accomplishment. What do you have to earn around those who love and accept you? To be with those you love ought to take that tension out of your back or the knot in your stomach. When I’m home, I feel the weight of activity taken off of my chest. Breath comes easier. And what do I do when I’m home? Nothing.

I remember the first time I moved away from home for a job. I sat on the couch and wept, knowing that it would be different than before. There was no end date on this like college. No hard breaks that brought me home like winter or spring break. I expressed my heartache on the couch at home, comforted by my family.

Prayer in its essence is communing with God. And as far as I can tell as of now, prayer is a home.

I find myself entering prayer some days with a sense of accomplishing something. I don’t mean to, but I sometimes enter prayer with the checkboxes and all the words, ready to really nail it. We are all perpetual beginners. There are days I have to stop myself because I notice my hunched-over posture and furrowed brows as if I’m trying to force my way through a secret door to get to Jesus. I find this to be burdensome prayer. It’s the prayer that feels hurried along and chore-like, robbed of its power and feels like an incantation.

In prayer, we are invited to a holy space in time. Prayer is like a room in and of itself, spacious and wonderful if we allow it to grip us. If we pay attention, this can grip us. This is a space where we have the opportunity to sit with the master Jesus and enjoy his company. This is home.

Imagination can play a key part in this. I forgot how my imagination can be a tool in my life of prayer. It helps paint the picture that I don’t fully see. Imagination can indeed be used for silly things but can be an aid to us when the world around us is not as it ought to be. Imagine a world where you’re not worried or hurried. Imagine a world where you have all you need. Imagine a world where pain and heartache are no more and every tear is wiped away. This is a glimpse into the Kingdom of God.

To sit with Jesus isn’t like sitting with a mean old boss. The God revealed in Jesus isn’t one of apathy or reluctance. Jesus reveals a God who is patient, forgiving, wants you to feel at ease. When we sit with Jesus, we sit with a Savior who calls us friend. We can put away the need to accomplish a mission or fulfill an obligation. The invitation to prayer is to sit with Jesus. It’s the invitation to sit at the table with the King in His Kingdom. To sit on the couch with a loved one.

To say that “prayer works” might be the industrious spirit inside us. Prayer indeed works, but perhaps not in the way we think. We understand that prayer isn’t the power we reference in this shorthand. If we understand prayer as the red phone that dials God just to get him to do what we want, we might be under-selling the beauty and wonder in our time spent in the sacred house of prayer. Petition and requests are not opposed to prayer though, Jesus himself in Gethsemane understood that prayer can take this form. But maybe request-making isn’t the primary function.

Prayer doesn’t “work” in the same way loving your spouse doesn’t “work”. Prayer is before it works. It is less of a computer that we operate and get to perform the functions we input and more of the couch we sit in. It is the table we dine at.

This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive view on prayer. There is so much more to be said on the subject. But these have been anchoring thoughts for me lately. Richard Foster says is better: “Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.”