What does prayer look like?

Sadly, the visual image of prayer has become decidedly feminine and aged.  I wonder if we presumed too much from the story of Simeon and Anna in the Temple.  In any case, prayer increasingly looks like the solitary domain of an elderly woman.  Whether clinging to a rosary or hands folded and eyes closed, the visual that accompanies prayer seems to have no room for others or for children or, especially, for men.  This has become a distinct problem for us.

Those inside and outside of churches see prayer as women’s work and the only women with the time to devote to prayer end up being the faithful but gray and white haired ladies of Christianity while the young, the youth, the younger women, and especially the men are too busy living to pray.  It is a profoundly more feminine snapshot than even those who attend worship.  Women, especially older women, pray but men work.  In the end, even faithful men have come to the view that God wants more from their hands in labor than in prayer and that is their challenge.  How odd!

The praying man has become an increasingly rare icon -- even among pastors.  The men not only fail to lead the family at prayer but their children find it hard to imagine dads and women husbands actually praying.  Now I am not saying that men never pray but that the image of a man at prayer has become absent from the albums that contain the ordinary images of life and worship.  Statistics have always said that the witness of the father bringing his family to church and leading the home has a profound and significant impact upon the likelihood of a child in the home keeping the faith.  Important but a much lower statistic is the woman and mother who brings her children to church and acts as the spiritual head of the home.

Man things are also increasingly hard to define.  There was once a common definition of the work of men as providers and protectors of the home but these have long ago given way to the shared duties of husband and wife with little real distinction between them.  Longer ago the man's role was to do the hard things of keeping order, maintaining discipline, fixing things, and the outdoor tasks of the house and yard.  But the primary work of the husband and father is within the life of the family.  They have increasingly become spectators in this and even distant spectators.  Yet surely our Lord presumes that this is not the case!  As the Scripture says “Would one of you hand his son a stone when he asks for a loaf or a poisonous snake when he asks for a fish?” (Matthew 7:9-10).  Our Lord is not talking to moms here but dads.  Is this reflective of the state of family life today -- even among Christians?  Could the Lord be reminding us that when men leave these domains and especially prayer to others, they are doing exactly that -- giving their loved ones and families stones instead of the Bread of God's Word and the Body of Christ to eat and allowing the dangerous play with serpents instead of the nurture of godly things?

Presence is everything.  You need to be present in the home and in the church to take up the cause of prayer.  Your wife is not for your pleasure but for your keeping safe and providing for and for whom you sacrifice even your life.  Your children are not playthings nor do they raise themselves but they are arrows in your quiver because of how you lead and care for them.  You cannot be a stranger to the House of God and fulfill your godly role assigned to you as man of the house, husband of your wife, and father to your children.  Faith conversations do not happen when you plan them but as you are with your family, less in the ordered conversations of devotion than in the practice of how you life, work, pray, sacrifice, and serve.  Children learn forgiveness not in Sunday school but as they witness their father grow in stature as a man who confesses to his wife and seeks her forgiveness and who hears his wife's confession and forgives her over and over again.  Children learn prayer they see their father pray at home and in worship, without shame or embarrassment and as the mark of the true strength of character and virtue.  Wives will gladly submit to a man they see demonstrating such conscience and resolve for love always invites love.

I am not at all suggesting that women or elderly women should stop praying.  What I am suggesting is that the minds of our children and youth should as readily conjure up the image of a vigorous man deep in prayer as the gray and white haired ladies we have become accustomed as the icons of prayer.  If men seek their families to follow, they must lead and they must lead them to church and in prayer.  This is how our children trust their fathers, listen to them, and follow their example.  Yes, men will fail but the restoration of the fallen is as profound as any example can be to children who need to know that God rescues the fallen.  So, men, don't be afraid of failure.  Maybe you did not have a good role model at home or maybe you did not learn from your own father.  That should not condemn you to their error or lack.  The strengthening of the family and the home begins on bended knee with the voice of husband and father leading the family in prayer.