Here’s a prayer from a little girl named Debbie, age 7:  “Dear God, Please send a new baby for Mommy.  The baby you sent last week cries too much.”

 

From David, age 7: “Dear God, I need a raise in my allowance.  Could you have one of your angels tell my father?”

 

And from Susan, age 9: “Dear Lord, Tomorrow is my birthday.  Could you please put a rainbow in the sky?”

 

Whether the situation is a wailing baby brother, an empty wallet, or a special birthday request, these children know enough to turn to God in prayer.  And that’s what James is saying in this morning’s epistle lesson.

 

"Are you suffering?  Pray!  Are you cheerful?  Sing songs of praise!  Are you sick?  Have others pray for you!"

 

Suffering and joy, sickness and health, defeat and victory -- all are experienced by anyone who ventures out into life and lives it fully.  And James tells us that in all of these situations of life, God invites us to share our experiences – our suffering, our joy, our thanksgivings -- in prayer.

 

James believed so strongly in prayer, and spent so much time in prayer, that his knees became hard and callused, earning him the nickname "old camel's knees."  But if we look at our own prayer life, how often do we accept God's invitation to pray?  How "callused" are our "knees"?

 

Abraham Lincoln said during the days of the Civil War, "I have often been driven to the throne of grace in prayer by the firm conviction I had no where else to go."  If we’re honest with ourselves, isn’t it true that many of us turn to prayer only when there’s "nowhere else to go"?  How many of us look upon prayer as a spiritual life preserver, the first thing we reach for in case of emergency?  And then, when things are going well, we put the life preserver back in the storage closet?

 

I imagine that many of us turn to prayer in moments of crisis or suffering.  But joy is also a call to prayer, and so is gratitude.  God wants our prayers not to be just in times of difficulty and suffering, but also in good times.  Throughout all the events of our lives, God wants us to be in communication with God, for that is what prayer is: communicating with God.  It’s not a monologue – our just talking to God, but indeed it is a dialogue, in which we talk with God, and God talks back. 

 

The form of prayer may be absolute silence, or quiet contemplation, or heartfelt expression.  Prayer may be a petition, in which we ask God to do something for us.  It may be intercessory, asking God to do something through us.  Or it may be spiritual communion, in which God does something in us.

 

But it’s hard to pray.  First, because it’s downright counter-cultural.  We live in a world of action, one that is goal-oriented and consumed with activity.  In our secular lives, we are concerned with productivity, efficiency, and achievement measured in external terms.  By contrast, prayer has no categories of measurement; there is no tangible "product" to show for one's efforts.  By the standards of the modern world, some might even consider prayer a waste of time. 

 

And sometimes our schedules are so full that we forget to pray, or we’re just too busy.  Jesus was busy, too, calling and training his disciples, teaching and preaching about the Kingdom of God, and healing, ministering to, and liberating the multitudes of sick and needy people who pressed in on him.  But he was able to do it all by putting time with God at the top of his priority list.  The gospels tells us how Jesus "arose in the early morning, while it was still dark, and went out and departed to a lonely place, and was praying there" [Mark 1:35] and how he would often "slip away to the wilderness and pray" [Luke 5:16].  Far from wearing prayer like a life preserver, Jesus dressed himself in it every day. 

 

Another frequently heard lament is, "I don't know how to pray."  Perhaps we do pray but feel that somehow we are doing it wrong or there must be a better way.  Perhaps we feel we don't know the “right” method or the “right” words, or something prevents our prayers from having the “right” quality.  Jesus' disciples had similar concerns and said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray" [Luke 11:1].  St. Paul himself shared his concern about praying in a letter to the Christians in Rome.  He wrote,  "…for we do not know how to pray as we ought." [Rom 8:26].  But Paul also gave us reason to put our fears and hesitations aside when he added that the "…Spirit intercedes” for us “with sighs too deep for words. "

 

Consider the prayer we hear of Moses in this morning’s Old Testament lesson from the book of Numbers.  When we think of Moses, we may picture him looking a lot like Charlton Heston, coming down from the mountain after encountering God in the burning bush, or stretching out his rod to roll back the waters of the Red Sea, or striking a rock in the desert and making the waters flow.  But this morning we see the angry, petulant and self-pitying side of Moses.  “Why are you treating me like this?” he asks God.  “You know, it wasn’t me who brought these people into the world.  I just can not deal with their whining and complaining.  I’ve had it.  If this is the way you’re going to treat me, do me a favor and just kill me now.”

 

I admit there have been times when I have felt like Moses – maybe you have, too.  But what makes his words prayerful is that he speaks honestly from his heart and that he recognizes his own insufficiency and knows enough to draw up God’s divine resources.  And God graciously and lovingly answers his prayer.

 

As we see in Moses, prayer is not saying the “right” words in the “right” way at the “right” time in the “right” position.  Instead, it is sharing honestly what is deep in our heart, and putting our reliance and trust in God.  The Book of Hebrews says of Moses, “He endured as seeing him who is invisible” [11:27].  That is what prayer is.  It is a verbalization of our awareness that God is there.  We cannot see God, but we can be assured that God is there, listening to us and communicating with us. 

 

Does prayer change things?  Absolutely!  But even more important, prayer changes us.  Once we enter God's presence, we cannot leave as the same person. 

 

On this World Communion Sunday, with our Christian brothers and sisters around the world, we hear again Jesus’ words, "Do this in remembrance of me."  In that request on the final night of his life, Jesus calls us to place our whole selves, body and soul, into our words of prayer. 

 

And so, rather than viewing prayer as a life preserver, let us clothe ourselves in prayer.  Let us make prayer part of the fabric of our lives so that we may communicate with and grow closer to the God who always invites us, always seeks to know us, and always reaches out to touch us, fully.  Amen.