PRAYER WAVES

Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them,

For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

I tell you the truth,

anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a child

will never enter in.

Mark 10:14b

The image of Jesus and the children is a favorite of mine. Perhaps because I love children: embracing their spontaneity, their honesty, and their unconditional love. Perhaps because Jesus stipulated we need to hug His kingdom like a child with spontaneity, honesty, love. Lately however, the image radiates with prayerful new waves of deepening faith.

After we sit on Jesus knee, we are asked to pattern our lives after his. But like children, we can’t sit long. We need to get on with the doing, the being. And Jesus gets up with us, to hold our hand as we get on with the busyness of life. As Teresa of Avila says:

“Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours, no feet but yours.

Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the world.

Yours are the feet with which Christ is to go about doing good.

Yours are the hands with which Christ is to bless all people now.”

Those radiating Jesus spheres are understandable, although not always easy to follow. Even more difficult is comprehending, let alone absorbing, God’s all encompassing love for us. Over a lifetime of prayer: childlike prayers, demanding prayers to fix, protesting prayers to undo, forgiving prayers to make better, finally, we come to a place of connecting to God in an actual loving relationship.

Early every morning, at least five days a week, I swim. In the summer it is in the glorious expanse of Lake Michigan; in the winter, at a local glass house pool.  Not swimming at all fast or in competition, just a consistent, even breast stroke. I would like to say it is for the exercise and it is. But more than that, it’s a prayerful encounter and embrace with God. Moving my arms through the water I am one with it and around it. God is the water. I am in a cavernous, contemplative prayer with Him. All else, the swimmers next to me, music from the pool’s speakers, playful summer waves splashing me, is blocked as I reverently dialogue with God. Often I hear answers, understand next steps. More often I just feel and touch: trusting completely God radiating within my next stroke, wrapping his love in and around me.

With thanks to Pastor Rick Dake and my Companions Class,

both at Clarkston United Methodist Church,

for encouragement and enlightenment while developing this writing