What do we expect?

On Saturday I led a prayer afternoon and evening at my congregation. The question I wished to ask was how our activities would be different if we expected God to be there, and if indeed they could be considered to be as prayer.

So we had a day where we did several different activities, each preceded by a scripture reading and prayer and each followed by a review and prayer. So we did indoor bowls, craft, garden work, cooked together, ate together and sang together.

In order to frame the reflection I looked to what prayer does in our lives, and ran into the thoughts of Richard Foster in "Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home" and the broad structure of the book is based on three foci: Looking inward, looking upward and looking outward. In looking inward we look at the realities of our lives and ask God to make the changes we need in our lives. In looking upward we seek to develop our relationship with God. In looking outwards we seek God's calling to go into the world.

However, I found this model much more appropriate to individualistic rather than community prayer. We are called to be a community in the church, and when we share in prayer I would hope we also grow together as a community. So I would add the focus of looking around.

When we did this, we actually had fun but there was an air of expectation that helped us grow as a community. This made me think about how much the use of words can be used to control the agenda of our prayer lives. Just as sometimes we just need to be with each other, we need to spend time just being with God, and I wonder if we do enough of this as a community.

I'm not sure if this has made any difference in any people's prayer lives, but I did have a person ask me about dismissing the congregation prior to morning tea as it should also be considered as worship.