Learning to know God's Risen Presence
When we sing “Jesus, stand among us in your risen power” what do we expect? Prayer is about, I believe, learning to wait long enough, to meet and spend time with Jesus and not just going on asking him to be with us.
I am reminded of a story by Anthony Bloom in his book “School of Prayer”. He tells about an elderly woman who said that for years she had prayed a familiar prayer without ever feeling God’s presence.
He perceived her problem. By speaking all the time when she went to pray she didn’t give God a chance to put a word in. So he suggested that after breakfast each morning she should make her room cosy and sit down and enjoy her surroundings. She should then take up her knitting and knit before the face of God for fifteen minutes. He forbad her to say a single word of prayer!
Talking with her some days later she told him how that as she sat quietly enjoying her surroundings and knitting she began to feel the silence – the clock ticking and her needles clicking. As time went on she realised it was not an empty silence but a rich dense silence. She felt a presence and she knew that at the heart of the silence was God.
“They who wait on the Lord renew their strength”. Perhaps again and again you may have asked God to renew your strength, but have waited for him to do so? Silent prayer is more than asking God for this or that. It is the place where we need to begin, for it is out of our waiting on God that our prayers for others, the church and the world should flow.
Of course we begin with words – perhaps repeating the verse about a few times. Words are like a banister going upstairs. We need them to help us up, but then we need to let go, for in and around the words and beyond the words is God himself whom we meet. The stillness and words bring us to him - are a means of coming to him, but when we realise his presence we don’t need words - we’re lost in “wonder, love and praise”!