What is prayer? This is a question I have been asking for years and every so often I gain a small insight. For the last year and a half I have been involved in a small group of people that have committed to gathering every morning for prayer. This experience has been life-changing for me and has taught me a lot about prayer.
A few weeks ago, the new of Chief of Police in Winnipeg made a request to the citizens of the city to pray for one another and for the well-being of the city. He said that if everyone were to pray for the good of Winnipeg, regardless of religious affiliation, the city would become a better place to live.
This got me thinking about what happens when people pray. A lot of discussion about prayer is focused on the dialogue between human and divine that takes place, but it would seem that this is only one part of prayer.
Praying is an action, you actually have to actively do something (I know, I know, some people like to talk about living a lifestyle of prayer; they always have the big guy on speed dial or some such nonsense. But in reality, these people are saying this to make up for their lack of praying, I know, because I used to be that guy). We know from developmental psychology that one of the major ways people learn how to do something is through repetition. Repetition of various scripts or narratives become very influential in how we think, and ultimately how we act. Take advertising for example, we are exposed to certain messages over and over in the hopes that we will heed the content of these messages and act out on them.
Prayer, on a very human level, functions this way. When we pray, we repeatedly come before the divine in a posture of humility, acclaiming the deity, contemplating the deity, thanking the deity, and bringing forward supplications to the deity (these are the A. C. T. S. of praying...). We are training ourselves to
a) acknowledge our own weakness, b) speak out our problems (which is basically what we spend a lot of money talking to counselors to do) and c) intercede for others.
An interesting thing happens when you pray, particularly when you pray corporately, or pray intercessory prayers for others. Barriers come down between people. The prayer group that I am a part of consists of everyone from freshmen to one of the deans at my university. Yet, when we come into the prayer-room, all office and division falls aside and we earnestly turn our attention to the Lord. We lay aside anything that regularly separates us in our united lowliness before God.
Daily we practice this, and after a while, I have noticed that the people of this group are much closer in other areas of daily life than they were before. There is a sense of camaraderie that exists between the members of this fellowship. We don't ever really pray specifically for one another, in fact we mostly say liturgical prayers that the Church has said for hundreds of years, but the act of praying together has had some miraculous effects.
Now, I think Chief Clunis was on to something when he asked the citizens of Winnipeg to pray for one another. After my own personal experience of praying in community, and praying for a community, I find it very difficult to act in a way that would be damaging towards the people of that community. What Clunis has hit upon, is the simple human ability to form positive habits, and he is asking everyone to form positive thought habits towards the city.
As a Christian, I would say that prayer actually does change things because God steps in and acts when we ask in Jesus name. I find it interesting however, that the very way in which we ask for miracles from God can actually cause miracles to happen.The goal of the Student Council that I sit on this year has been to foster community in my school. Here, in a very simple, tangible, yet miraculous way, we have a way to accomplish this goal. We now have an even greater sense of urgency to heed the words of the apostle when he urges the Ephesians to pray in the spirit on all occasions.
Pray on my friends.
