Let Us Pray

Rev Mimi McDowell
I recently attended a Congregational Care Ministers Seminar at the Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas. One of the items included in the packet of materials we received was a Pastor’s Pocket Edition of The United Methodist Book of Worship to be used as a resource for prayer at the bedside, in a crisis or in a counseling session. The pastors leading the training said that they had found this to be an invaluable resource, especially for lay volunteers who often reported that they felt uncomfortable when they didn’t know how to pray in certain situations. And it is a wonderful resource, with prayers that are rich and deep. There are beautifully written prayers for a variety of circumstances, including persons going through divorce, those suffering from addiction or substance abuse, people with life-threatening illness, and for persons in coma or unable to communicate. There is power and beauty in their liturgy. And they provide the gift of “just the right thing to say” in some very difficult moments of ministry.
In Mudhouse Sabbath, Lauren Winner speaks of the importance of liturgical prayers, specifically those prayers that are prayed in the exact same way regularly, perhaps daily or even several times a day – the prayers that have become so ingrained in our being that we know them by heart and can say them without thinking. For most of us Protestants, about the only prayer that we know that well and recite that regularly is the Lord’s Prayer.
Several years ago, our church started a contemporary worship service. In keeping with the contemporary music and worship format, any hint of traditional liturgy was omitted from the service. Rather than scrapping the Lord’s Prayer entirely, the prayer was rewritten with modern, contemporary language. Yet, in time, many began to comment that they missed it. Parents commented that they did not want their children to grow up without knowing the Lord’s Prayer. They realized that there is a sense of relatedness in that liturgy that connects us, regardless of denomination or theology, as the Body of Christ.
And while I love the richness of the liturgy and the power of the connectivity, I also value the depth and honesty of those spontaneous prayers that are not beautifully written but are simple and brutally honest. As I opened my Facebook page this morning, I encountered prayer requests from two friends. One was an unspecified request. So I prayed for that friend, “God, I don’t know what Diane needs, but you do. Please let her feel your loving embrace today.” The other request was for a friend’s dog that had gotten into some poison and was very sick. With all sincerity and compassion, I also prayed for Brenda and Spot.
Whether liturgical and rote or spontaneous and crude, we are all called to prayer. Whether it is frequent prayer at specific times during the day, or spontaneous prayer while working or driving or taking a shower, we are called to pray. In the words of the Apostle Paul to the Thessalonians, we are to “pray without ceasing.” So, let us pray.