Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving. Colossians 4:2
I was multi-tasking. It was the wrong time to do so. My wife was sharing with me a conversation she had had with her mother. Then I turned, to check my phone that had rung earlier, and she grew silent. The long and short of it was that my body language was clear: I was no longer paying attention. She was right – I was wrong.
There is an alertness to prayer. Prayer is conversation with God. Conversation implies a two-way sharing. Prayer is not always about talking to God. The Christian habit of prayer is also about paying attention to God.
That’s the problem with prayer on the run: it’s multi-tasking with God. I don’t mean to say that we shouldn’t pray on the run. It’s just that when that’s the only way we habitually pray, we don’t have time to listen to God. It’s like me turning from my wife to check my phone. I thought I could still hear her – and I could! I just couldn’t hear her fully.
We live in a time when people are spiritually starving for relationship with God. This reminds me of a time when I was fasting and went to a pot luck supper at church. The food was plentiful, but I couldn’t eat because I had other commitments. The other commitments of our lives, the busy-ness we all live with squeezes God out.
Paul tells us to keep alert in prayer: alert to ourselves; alert to our circumstances and alert to God’s presence.
God has promised us to always be present to us. God has also promised, in Jesus Christ, to always be present in the Holy Spirit to guide us and bless us with wisdom and discernment. Yet, many Christians experience life in the silence of God. Perhaps God is patiently silent, longing for us to become alert to his love and purpose for our lives. Maybe, like my wife, God’s silence is an invitation to stop doing so much and be present to him.
When was the last time you took real time, in prayer, to be alert? The richness of time in the presence of God is wonderful. You will find it worth the effort to stop, pay attention and simply be in the moment, in the promises of Christ, and in the heart of God. The habit of alertness in prayer is rewarding in the energy, perspective and wisdom we receive. But the best of it is simply to know God.
Lord Jesus, let me stop and be alert to you today. Amen
