Wellington: What is prayer to you?

I have always been captivated by the stories in the New Testament depicting Jesus praying. For example, in Luke 6:12, Jesus is said to have gone out to a mountain to pray,” ... and continued all night in prayer to God.” This reference was before he began his ministry. Most Christians arc familiar with his steadfast prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane before being arrested and taken to Pontius Pilate for trial.

I ask myself all the time, how was he praying in the Garden of Gethsemane? Perhaps there were some words involved as reported in the Gospels, although no one was awake to hear him. More likely, he was listening. Listening for direction. Listening for a clear sense of what he needed to do. Listening for the assurance of God’s love. Just listening.

When you think of prayer, do you think of it in terms of listening, or in terms of beautiful words strung together — often asking God for something in a prayer of petition. At other times, it’s tempting to tell God what we think God should know. In either case, it’s probably not what Jesus thought of as prayer.

In his Serman on the Mount, Jesus gave some helpful instructions on prayer. He taught that prayer should be done in secret, not as a public spectacle. He also instructed us not to use vain repetitions, but rather to pray knowing that God knows our needs before we ask.

Given these ideas, isn’t prayer the practice of bringing our own concepts and ideas more in line with God’s? In other words, listening for what we often do not know what is needed.

When we do this, we move beyond our own egocentric prayer and into the prayer of

Christ himself. As Paul observed, “we do not know how to pray, but the Spirit prays within us.”

The world has never been more in need of this kind of prayer.

— Reflections appears regularly on the religion page. The column features a variety of local writers, coordinated through the Monroe Area Clergy Group. Charles Wellington is a lifelong student of the teachings of Christ Jesus and regularly meditates with the Great Plains Zen Center in Monroe.