This Good Friday meditation comes from Ann Hall (FPC Finance Coordinator):
Prayer is so many things. Depending on one’s personality, faith story, and season of life, it can be natural and comfortable, or awkward and difficult, or anywhere in between. Earlier on my path of following Jesus, I felt there was a “way” to pray, a formula perhaps, that I never quite got right. However, the longer I walk this road, the more I am realizing, by way of wise words of teachers and guides, that prayer is not a task.
Especially now, as I try to get my head and heart around the seemingly discordant realities of Holy Week and Shelter in Place, I find solace in the idea that I DO pray, even if it looks quite different than my “formula” prayers of years ago.
If you, like me, are finding it hard to concentrate on anything for very long, I would like to offer you this encouragement: it’s OK to sit in silence with God and not have anything to “say”. That is prayer.
Thomas Keating said, “Silence is God’s first language.” I take comfort in that. If you have no words, you can pray in silence. If you have no idea what to pray for, you are still absolutely praying when you bring that unknowing to God.
I would like to end by offering the following poem by Soren Kierkegaard. On this Good Friday unlike any we have known, take heart, and know that silence is prayer.
As My Prayer
by Soren Kierkegaard
As my prayer became more attentive and inward
I had less and less to say,
I finally became silent.
Started to listen
-which is even further removed from speaking.
I first thought that praying entailed speaking.
I then learnt that praying is hearing,
not merely being silent.
This is how it is.
To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking,
Prayer involves being silent,
And waiting until God is heard.