(Exodus 34:29-35; 2 Corinthians 3:7-4:2) // (VSF Creed)
What is prayer?
It’s not a trick question, or one with a right answer which you’re supposed to find. Tell truth, I’ve been at this whole following-Jesus business for decades, and I’m not sure I’ve ever had an answer for very long. Is prayer about asking for things, is it about God changing us, do we need to be specific and detailed, is it immature to make specific requests of God—do we know enough to even know what we really want to ask? At various points in my life, I’ve had answers to each of those questions, but they’ve never been the same answers from one point to another. What, really, are we on about when we pray?
To help us think about this, I want to draw in my favorite poem by one of my favorite poets, the 17th-century Anglican priest George Herbert. His principal poetic collection, published after his death, is The Temple; one of the odd things about it is that some of the titles, such as “Love,” “Affliction,” and “Employment,” were applied to multiple poems, and so we have poems with names like “Employment (II)” and “Love (III).” There are numerous great poems in the book—“Love (III)” is one of the greatest, in fact—but my favorite is “Prayer (I),” which offers an extraordinary response to the question “What is prayer?”
Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;
Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tow’r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices; something understood.