The Prayer Thread is a collection of teachings and practical prompts to help as we learn to pray in community. This text was originally delivered on April 20, 2022 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
Often, we pray because we want something to change. Especially in our intercessory prayers, we want to change something going on in the world, to change something about another person, and even, at times, to change ourselves. The petitionary tendency in our prayer honors our capacity for growth as well as the dynamic nature of transformation.
Growing and maturing are certainly healthy movements! And yet in prayer, it is also healthy to arrive just as we are: messy, doubtful, sad, prone to ups and downs. In prayer, I can be just who I am.
I recall a significant reflection exercise that helped me to recognize that God is always, already meeting us just where we are. At quarter-life, I completed a spiritual auto-biography, with instructions to mark out significant people and events in my life with an eye toward noticing God throughout those times.
To my delight, I saw the pattern: each time I arrived at a given point, poised with particular needs and desires, God always met me just where I was, and also gently lured me toward the next step on the path of healing and wholeness. A low sense of worth was met with a capacity to run and lead a team of high school athletes. A sense of deep sorrow caused by the absence of a father was met with a friend in Jesus and a sense of Presence in the movement of the wind. So many examples! We each have our own portfolio of moments when we are met just where we are and called to be just who we are.
