BBC Radio 4 2016-06-29

Good Morning,

It is said that in times of great uncertainty people pray more, so we can assume the lines are jammed right now. And with a recent report, from the Thinktank Theos, suggesting that praying together is good for us whether we believe prayer ‘works’ or not, maybe we should all be looking for somewhere to pray and someone to pray with.

Twenty years ago a friend of mine started a prayer group that met every Friday in his garden shed. Over the years the sheds and heads have changed but the group still meets. In 20 years you end up praying through a lot of wars, government collapses, stock market crashes and England football fiascos. Were all our prayers for peace and stability answered? Clearly not. Did we carry on praying? Yes. 20 years has also seen a lot of prayers for help and healing shot out from sheds, front rooms and allotments; was every single request met? Not really. There was a man we prayed for who came out of a coma, but there was also the mother of two who didn’t come through the cancer. Did we give up praying after that? Of course not.

In its widest sense prayer is a universal human activity, as elemental as breathing. For some it springs from a yearning far deeper than simply needing to get stuff we want. We know (unless we’re deluded) that we can never completely control our personal lives or events in the world. So we bridge the gap between what we can do and what is done to us by wishing, longing, despairing and hoping. All of these can be forms of prayer.

We might pray because we are grateful or we might pray because we are desperate but we still pray. As Abraham Lincoln said: ‘I’m driven to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I have no where else to go.’ At it’s most basic, we utter prayers in the hope that there is something good underpinning all of life, something at the core of existence that can bring stability to our wobbly lives in this volatile world.

These prayers don’t have to be long or eloquent and maybe don’t even require great faith. My friend’s preferred prayers were usually ‘Oh God, Help!’ And ‘Jesus, please do something!’ Jesus himself said the shorter our prayers the better. When the disciples asked him how to pray he gave them the Lord’s Prayer, one of pithiest mixes of poetry and practicality ever uttered. Be thankful, be direct, and bring your requests; but do it all with a confidence and hope that prayers, whether offered up from sheds or cars, cathedrals or beds, do not go out and come back void but are heard by a God who is a very present help in times of trouble.