A conversation

I have spent a lot of my Christian life tripped up by prayer, as I think many folks are. Not caught by doing it, but rather what it is and how I do it. Until just a few weeks ago, I treated it as something that had to be done, me coming with my face in the dirt before God, trying to make penance for my sins, or asking for something, or what have you. Even my prayers of praise were like that, censored and cleaned up, me trying to bring before God what I thought He would want to hear.

Tonight, during the 15 minutes of silence on camp, all the Summer Staff and a few intern guys were hanging out, and we went off to spend that time in prayer and silence. I started off like I did so often, with apologizing to God, saying I hadn't made time to talk to Him, to do this, that, and the other thing for Him. I was feeling pretty discouraged and thinking that the time was kind of pointless.

Almost immediately after I had that thought, I realized what I was doing. Jesus is my best friend, yet there I was, treating Him like I didn't even know Him. It struck me that prayer is a conversation between us and our best and truest friend in the universe. It is not filling out a request form, or an awkward meeting between a sinner and an uncaring god, or any of the ritualistic crap that gets fed into our systems. There is no formula to God. He is only Love, and that is what He desires.

After I began to just talk to Him, telling Him what was going on in my life, what I was thankful for, and some of the things I was excited about, I began to feel His presence around me and in me. That is all the confirmation I need to show me what prayer really is. A conversation.

A conversation. It can take many forms. It can be a beautiful praise, an angry tirade, a time of reflection, a sharing of excitement and joy, a remembrance of something or someone, as pure as snow, as raw as a salt scrubbed wound, anything at all. Not a formula, but an exchange between two, or more, dear friends. God is there, and He desires the love of our hearts and all that is in them, and I feel it is a crime to hold anything back from Him.


lane