Pastoral Thought--June 4

As with most issues in life, the time comes where we need to return to prayer. 

My days are filled with things that can take me away from God if I am not careful—I suspect that you find yourself in those places with those temptations also. I read the news on either my iPad or iPhone each morning as I sip my coffee, and I don’t hear often from God there. And I wonder if I should look harder for God? I spent time watching the evening news which is not a religious program and am shocked when I find myself feeling sad or deflated when the program ends. Email from the PC(USA), or other religious groups that I subscribe to, contain threads that can make even the most devout Christian lose some amount of hope. 

This feeling seems to live in everything that we touch. And so, we need to return often to prayer as a way to ground ourselves in God. 

In those times, I am thankful for the writing of Heidi Neumark. She is a Lutheran pastor based in Brooklyn, New York whose work I found while working on my doctorate. In her book, Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx, she says: 

“Time spent in prayer is worth it, too, even when it seems useless. . . 

Prayer is not a magic-carpet ride carrying us off to some utopia. 

It is an act of attention grounded here, alert to the connections wherever we wait. .  . 

The connections of prayer weave their own sacred carpet, 

joining the variegated threads of our lives one to another and to all things."

The context of Neumark’s words relate to a time when she found herself in a Bronx Court room with a sign that read: “No Eating! No Drinking! No Sleeping! No Reading!” She tried to sneak a little book about prayer into the room to wait her turn, only to have the security guard twice reprimand her for quietly reading a book. The story concludes as she realizes that she is allowed to pray even if she cannot read her little book about prayer. And so she prays. . . She prays for the situation that brought her here. She prays for the people she sees, and offer silent words of hope to God for them. 

And as those connections and prayers are sown together in a powerful way in that courtroom. 

I wonder how your day, which can be filled with things that distract your from God, could be shaped in prayer that could help you connect to your neighbors and to your God?

Blessings

Rev. Derek