Open Widows

Prayer Retreat

What is said when no one is speaking?

What is heard when there is silence?

A couple weeks ago my pastor spoke of the disciplines of prayer and spending time alone with God and these are the questions that came to mind.

I really love nature. It is there, surrounded by His creation, that I feel most at peace. For my Foundations for Ministry class our Professor challenged us to spend a few hours in the day just being with God. For my prayer retreat I planned on going to my favorite place Mt. Rubidoux in Riverside, Ca.

First of all I was unable to make it up to Mt Rubidox. It had been really windy that morning and since I had the beginnings of a cold with out health insurance, I thought it best to separate myself in a quiet, secluded, walled, germ free place. I chose the CBU Prayer chaple. Right as I began I received a call from a very close friend. She asked where I was because she wanted to hang out. I told her what I was doing and where and she said we could meet up later when I was done. I decided to silence my cell phone in order to prevent any further interruptions.

I now understand why it is referred to as a discipline. To keep focused for such a long period of time is a nearly impossible feat. After 15 minutes of just staring off into space I decided to make a list of things I would pray for. A list composed of 40 names and situations took me nearly an hour to compose. If I wasn’t off in my mind thinking of the different reasons why I had let this person into my life I was busy fantasizing of the different things my friends and I would do later. I decided enough was enough and my first petition was that God would grant me the focus to complete this time with Him. After spending a little under an hour in prayer I decided to move onto another form of meditation. I took out my Bible, which I lovingly refer to as “my Man” and went through the book of Matthew. Since this is the book we are going through in my New Testament Intro class, I thought I could kill two birds with one stone. I awoke sometime later to find that I had fallen asleep sometime after the 13th chapter. Deciding that Matt was heavily disappointed in me I moved onto reading a devotional and asking that God would speak to me through this.

After about an hour I heard a knock at the door of the Prayer Chapel. It was my friend who I had spoken to at the beginning of my Prayer retreat. She had gotten in an argument with her parents and was in desperate need of prayer and guidance. She confessed that she whole-heartedly feared that she would not find me. We spent some time discussion the events of the day, and the counsel others had given her. My words seemed to reaffirm their advice. The whole time we were conversing I was praying that God would grant me the wisdom to say the words that needed to be said. It was in that moment that I felt closest to God, because I was not going to Him out of completing a project for class, but because I truly needed Him and wanted Him near. Shortly after I finished praying with my friend I realized night service was about to begin so it was time to leave.

So to answer the questions I posed earlier…
What was said when no one was speaking?
What was heard when there was silence?

I need God. He is the only way I am going to survive. It is with this understanding that I will enter any moment of worship, either public or in private.

Namaste

A common greeting in India, it means "The God in me recognizes the God in you"

A couple days ago I was talking to my brother in law. He just came back from Iraq, and we haven't really talked about what he did over there. I don't want to press the issue until he is ready to talk about it with me. We were watching a film in which a man who had just come back from a similar situation was suffering a psycological breakdown.

We were created by the divine and are made in His image. To kill one another would be an attack on the divine. This force that binds the Universe also binds us one to another. The sacredness of that surpreme being has created a sacredness of human life.

I told him that it was imposible for a human to kill another human. He looked at me, sneered, and he said it was. I countered by telling him to kill others without a sense of remorse or pain is to mark oneself as simply a creature, and thus in-human. He just sat quiet.

I hope he understands that no matter what he did, he is still human and he holds to that.