Everyone knows...
Fold hands, bow heads.
Everyone knows...
Praise, petition, plea,
Concerns, celebrations,
As though we were cajoling God...
And perhaps we whisper our prayers because Anne Dillard was right that worry we might wake the slumbering God.
Everyone knows the formula.
As though prayer was caught, rather than taught.
As though prayer was absorbed by osmosis.
So, why did Jesus' closest friends ask about prayer?
Surely, they had heard prayers spoken by rabbis, religious leaders.
Surely, they had heard their own parents pray prayers every Sabbath.
If everyone knows the formula,
what was it about Jesus' prayers that awoke a new kind of curiosity, longing, like the deer longing for water that the psalmist sings about?
Maybe no one knows the formula.
Maybe we all stumble and stammer.
Maybe we all strain and grasp for words.
Maybe prayer is less about eloquence.
More about experiencing the holy that is.
Less about knowing,
More about being known!
May it be so for each of us each day this week.
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