This week for our Lenten devotionals, I took some time looking for some of my favorite quotes from our Lent/Easter book "Prayer in the Night: For Thos Who Work or Watch or Weep". We are gathering on Monday, March 11th at 7pm to take our first crack at this book. If you are interested, please come and join us! For today's Look from Brook I chose to share this quote and my reflection.
“It is better to come to God with sharp words than to remain distant from him, never voicing our doubts and disappointments. Better to rage at the Creator than to smolder in polite devotion. God did not smite the psalmist. Through the Psalms, he dares us to speak to him bluntly.” ― Tish Harrison Warren, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep
I grew up in the age of the great public prayer! The prayer that was elegant and full of flowery words that I didn’t understand, but that sounded so beautiful. My dad, who was a pastor, was very good at these prayers. I remember him staying up late on a Saturday night writing them out so carefully and even practicing them out loud! They were almost more important to him than the sermon!
But then things changed! My sister died in a car accident! And on the first Sunday after her death, my dad said a public prayer that I will never forget. Two things happened in that prayer: My dad shouted in anger at God, and he cried tear after tear in grief.
Both of these acts changed the way I looked at prayer from that moment on. As Dad shouted and cried, I found myself stirred by something much larger than I was. And I wasn't alone. For as Dad let the anger and tears flow, the entire community of the Wagner United Methodist Church felt moved to stand and and gather round him and join him. And, for the first time in my life, I understood what being a child of God was. I understood what being the beloved community was, too! And as we all gathered around Dad, I never felt more surrounded by love than when my dad dared to pray a real prayer from the bottom of his broken heart!
Your friend and pastor, daring us all to be more real in our prayers, Brook