Life is prayer and prayer is life
Prayer, in my view, is not just a short dialogue wherein I make my needs known to God and ask Him that He fulfils my needs. If it remains only on this level than we make God into a complaint box. We just keep dropping our needs. Prayer is indeed a quality time that we spend with God, thanking, praising, speaking, crying and seeking help. However, prayer is not just a separate activity that I carry out at different moments of the day but our total life has to become a prayer. If what we call as prayer does not lead us to develop an intimate relationship with God, it ceases to be a prayer. Prayer has to renew us and transform us. Prayer should become very part of our being and change our life into a prayer. Life is prayer and prayer is life!
Moses, in the first reading from Exodus, prays tirelessly for his people while Joshua leads them in battle against Amalek. As long as Moses hands are raised up in prayer, Joshua does well; when his arms slump, their opponents had the better of the tide of battle turn in favour of Amalek. The story of Moses is not merely about how he prayed to God to deliver his people from Amalek but it is a story of Moses’ persevering relationship with God. From the time God calls Moses from the burning bush, Moses is in deep and profound relationship with God. Whatever Moses says and does spring from his friendship with God. We cannot be content with our ritualized prayer life in which we spend few minutes of few hours praying to God for our needs and needs of others. We need to live our lives as prayer which means we live our entire life in relationship with God. It is not that we pray sometimes in our lives but our whole life becomes a prayer. Moses remains always with God. It is not that Moses searches for God only when he or his people need Him but Moses is always with God seeking to fulfil His will. The faith of Moses that God shall always come to his rescue and his perseverance in holding onto God no matter what happens around him qualify the kind of relationship he had with God.
In the Gospel we read about an insistent widow who constantly pleads with a judge. She does not give up and she is at his doorstep everyday for a just decision. The widow does not stop with just one request to the judge. She keeps coming back to judge. She does not get out of Judge’s sight but remains close to him nagging him with her request. To get justice becomes the goal of her entire life.
Prayer is a relationship. It is a conscious relationship or friendship between God and mankind. God knows us even before we were conceived in our mother’s wombs and our names are written in His palms. God is in relationship with us. Prayer is our response to that relationship of God. It is in prayer we exchange love, friendship, cares, worries and concerns with God. Therefore our entire life is indeed a prayerful relationship with God. What we do and say stem from this relationship. It is therefore important that we persevere in prayer – in prayerful relationship with God.
Paul in his second letter to Timothy writes, “Remain faithful to what have learned and believed.” Our life becomes prayer when we remain faithful to the teachings of Jesus in our lives. In our weaknesses we may fail at times but we need to always strive to live a life that is pleasing to God. Moses and the widow in the scripture are models for perseverance in prayer. We need to persevere in living our whole life as prayer. Despite the distractions that we may face in our lives, we need to remain focused on living a life that is in accordance with the Lord. We come to church to pray and to be with the Lord. We need to remember however that prayer does not end here in the church. Our prayer continues out there in the world. Our witnessing life becomes a prayer to God.
Prayer is not a disconnected reality from our life. It is not like that we can do what we want and we live our lives how we want and we come to church to pray to ease our conscience and to make things right. Prayer is life and life is prayer. Prayer is therefore not only words uttered but prayer is life that is lived. Søren Kierkegaard rightly defines prayer as “The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
johnsekarofm 