November 22ndHelp! Why? Thank you!
Help! Why? Thank you! Sorry I’ve neglected you.
These are the words that describe the prayer life of my teens and early twenties. These words were offered by me to God. Words were the instrument of my prayers. And then one day I couldn’t find the words. I did not know what words to pray. I could not find the words to express what I needed/wanted. The source of my restlessness and unsettledness was a mystery to me, so how could I ask God for help when I didn’t really know what it was I needed? God led me to the apostle Paul, to Romans 8 where we are assured that when we do not know how to pray as we ought, the Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. Praise be to God! I did not need to know the words! What a gift this was to me. During this time, I started using the Lord’s Prayer as the words to my unspoken plea allowing the Spirit to give my needs/prayer to God. I grew to trust the Spirit in praying on my behalf. I did not need to provide the words and instead used the words God provided, like the Lord’s Prayer and the psalms. My role was to make the time and space for conversations with God, but I did not need to provide the words.
Prayer with words – mine or another’s – slowly changed to prayer without words. Early in my ministry, I had a spiritual director who encouraged me to spend time in contemplative prayer – to sit in silence with God. At first, five minutes of silence was overwhelming, my mind constantly racing. Now, it is much easier to spend 30 minutes in silence with God (though some days my mind still races). This same spiritual director also challenged me to move away from wordy prayers to praying with colour and without structure. This is still an area of prayer that challenges me. And it also helps me to pray when words seem insufficient. Last month as war broke out in the Holy Land, and divisions rose up in Canada, the prayer that came to me was at the end of a paintbrush. Yes, my canvas is words – the hymn page of Come Ye Disconsolate, (as Mennonites our hymnals are our prayer books) – and the prayer and praying happened in watercolours. When life is heavy or uncertain, when we do not know how to pray, we can trust that the Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.
