Silent Prayers

 September 16, 2021

Sometimes silence is the best prayer. I read today the following: “Those moments when you just can’t put your prayer into words, God hears your heart.” I wonder if sometimes our words get in the way of our prayers. Through my years as a pastor, I have often been the ‘go to’ person  when the occasion seems to warrant a prayer. It’s expected that the pastor will have just the right words and can offer a prayer both fluent and eloquent, when as often as not, I am left mumbling words that may sound pretty but which are as empty as my brain often is.

Pastors make their living with words, but finely crafted words can be deceptive. When I was a teenager, Wednesday night prayer meetings were almost obligatory in our church. I and a few other teenagers sat in the back, dutifully quiet for the most part. There came a time however, when a prayer was either expected or needed to break the silence. Heaven knows, we can’t have a silent prayer meeting! So one of us would pray, not necessarily to talk to God, but to see how many Amens we could get. One or two was barely adequate; a good prayer would go on for five minutes or more and garner a boatload of Amens. Yeah, that was me back then.

I don’t care about Amens anymore, but I do fear that my public prayers today are often no more genuine than the ones offered in those long-ago prayer meetings. This morning at our men’s prayer group, Harry was absent, so I led…not as well as I would have liked, though. I said the words, but early in the morning, my brain isn’t fully functioning, and it felt as if I were just saying the right words, but missing the essence of prayer, which is communion with our Heavenly Father through the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ. When the heart or head is conflicted or confused, silence might be better. Next time, I’ll try to remember that.