Is it prayer or not?
I visited Tabernacle of David yesterday morning. Yes, I actually went to church -- mainly coz I needed to pass something to WinsomeOne, who would be flying back to the US together with his family later that night.
Towards the end of the service, the senior pastor's wife encouraged church members to pray more. "If your praying consists of saying grace at mealtimes and saying goodnight to God every night, try praying for five minutes every day," she said.
This reminded me of something a friend of mine, someone knowledgeable in theology and who has a string of letters after his name to prove it, said to me a few months ago. He said he had kinda mentioned something to God in passing, and then what he had been longing for came along, and he couldn't quite believe that it was happening.
"God answered your prayer and you can't believe it?" I laughed.
"Well, I didn't really PRAY for it," he qualified. "I didn't ask God for it."
"The cry of the heart is still a prayer what, even if it is silent," I retorted.
But his words underlined my confusion about prayer. We teach young children and new believers that prayer is simply "talking to God", then we contradict ourselves by acting as if talking to God is not really praying. No, you have to be on your knees -- or if not, at least freeze in position, bow your head, close your eyes and clasp your hands, and you have to speak properly. None of those 'lahs' and Manglish grammar and stuff.
I get the sense that we think any normal kind of talking to God is not serious enough to be considered prayer. In fact, we may be praying much more than we realise.
When I tell God, "God, I feel so tired today," as I drive to work, I am praying.
When I frantically look high & low for my car keys and mutter, "O Lord, I am so disorganised... help!", I am praying.
When I buy too many books and think, "God, I shouldn't have spent so much money in that bookstore, maybe that was not a wise spending decision," I am praying.
If we can go through our days with the conscious knowledge that God is with us in every situation at every moment, I'm willing to bet that we'll literally be praying throughout the day. Coz it's as natural as breathing, to dialogue with our Friend and Companion as things crop up and issues or worries arise.
I wish we would stop being so obsessive about quantifying things like how long we spend in prayer each day or how many people we have told about our faith (jargon: "witnessed to") and how many people we have managed to convert (jargon: "led to Christ"). Somehow I really doubt that God is as obsessive about all these statistics and numbers as we are.
**I like this article on prayer. It really is that simple ;)