Pray and work. . . work and pray. . .

So often to Christians the subject of prayer means stopping everything you are doing, kneeling dow, closing your eyes, clasping your hands together, and focusing solely upon God.  Of course, this often ends up being the recitation of a list of expectations (even demands) made of God and rather one sided.  This is certainly not the sense of prayer you find in the Old Testament nor in the New.  There were certainly such formal times of prayer in which all of the above were utilized but typically prayer was an activity that accompanied the work of one's life and did not begin when the business of life ceased.  

A while ago I searched for a slim little volume called The Practice of the Presence of God.  I had purchased it in college, perhaps at the suggestion of folks somewhat involved in the then charismatic movement.  Or maybe I got it from somebody else -- I cannot recall.  When I could not find it, I did the usual for me.  I picked up one for a buck or two at an online used book place only to then look at my bookshelf and find the original -- right where I looked for it earlier but did not find it.  That is, I suspect, one of the downsides of having moved a library which had spend 25 years in one space and now was weaned down and moved to a new space.  

The point of that story was when I opened it up, Brother Lawrence (whose original work was transcribed by another and then translated into English) appears to agree with me -- or, rather, I agreed with him since he beat me to it by a few centuries.  In the volume, the translator summarized Brother Lawrence approach as a “principal view was to teach men how to converse with God at the same Time they were employed in their ordinary business.”  Since Brother Lawrence worked in the kitchen, pray while peeling potatoes.  We need to hear that.  Our daily chores and the vocations of our lives do not pause for much and if prayer is to wait for a moment in which mind, heart, and hands are free from distraction, we will never pray.  But if we learn to pray through the course of our normal lives, prayer will not be as difficult as it often seems.  Key to this is the idea of blessing God for the manifold good things in our lives and for the basic things so often removed from our thinking when we sit down to pray.  Blessing God for these before beginning the inevitable laundry list of things we want Him to do for us is a salutary way of praying that will encourage a life of prayer and fill us with contentment and peace.  In our anxious world, we are always looking for ways to reduce the stress and relieve us of the worry that is far to prevalent.  How better to do this than to praise God for the small and simple and ordinary blessings of our lives?

It is not a small or insignificant thing to say "God is good" as life unfolds.  It is a solemn reminder especially during those occasions when we are not very solemn and chaos beckons us.  It is a good and salutary reminder to us to actually say out loud that God's good providence governs all things in heaven and on earth.  Scripture mentions this in a rather pithy way:  He makes all things work together for the good of those who love Him.  When we are not so sure He actually does love us and when things are careening out of control in our lives, it is good to say out loud what we struggle to say to ourselves.  While it is hard to let go of the bad news on the media and the constant spiral downward of a world that appears to be out of control, we need to learn to detach ourselves from concerns and anxieties over daily life and the only way to do this is to believe in God's goodness and to trust in His providence.  We do this because we have the cross -- the unmistakable sign of His love for us and the reminder that He has invested the priceless treasure of His only Son's suffering and death that we might be His own and live under Him.  Why would He now carelessly abandon those for whom Christ died and rose again?

This prayer is rather ordinary and may seem rather plain.  It is not but the context of it is the plain and ordinary exercise of our lives.  In practical terms, we are asked to maintain a constant “conversation” with God throughout our everyday lives.  On the one hand, we plead our need for His grace, our desire to know His love, and and our trust in His mercy.  Like Peter of old, we know we have nowhere else to go to obtain such grace, love, and mercy.  But in the midst of the day’s demands, there is great reward in learning the practice of such reminders. It also is helpful to know that daily tasks, as important as they are in this life, are not the sum and total of who we are. We belong to the Lord, we live together in constant community and death cannot end the relationship we have with one another through Christ.  So we do the best we can, we lay our achievements and our failures in His hands, we work not to secure our salvation but because our salvation has been secured for us and so we are free to turn to our neighbor and care for our neighbor's needs.  Those whom we love will die but those who die in the Lord are not lost to us at all.  The liturgy with its communion in Word and Meal is supreme but we are dismissed from that assembly and not from our daily communion with God.  The daily does not replace the gathering of God's people around His Word and Supper and that gathering before Him is not the only time we spend with Him and in His presence.  Both work together for the common goal of living under Him in His kingdom without end, now on earth and then in heaven.  Jeremy Taylor connected our work and prayer also -- do not work for that which you cannot pray and do not pray for that which you are not willing to work.