The Centrality of Prayer

By Joe B. Jewell

After almost thirty years in parish ministry, I am still surprised how often someone approached me to ask about prayer. The questions ranged over a vast plain of issues including language, form, appropriate subjects, even posture. There were almost as many different questions as questioners. But this experience taught me one thing in particular: prayer is central to the life of faith.

If you practice any form of faith you are somehow called to pray, to address yourself to something beyond your self. Something has happened that stirs in you a need to reach out beyond yourself in order to understand yourself. This call can take many forms. Great tragedy, great joy, an experience that opens new vistas in your reality, a sermon, a walk in the woods, the touch of a lover, the support of a friend, the list is as infinite as we are. Whatever it is that has elicited your interest or involvement in prayer it is something that tells you or maybe just hints to you that you and your life are involved in something greater than yourself. Prayer is the attempt to enhance that connection.

Notice that I use “called to prayer.” All religions in some form or other call their followers to engage in prayer. They formalize or ritualize this essential part of the religious life. For many that form of prayer is enough and it works to establish and maintain the connection their faith describes. For many others that connection elicits a more private response and personal prayer takes a central role in the operation of their faith. These people develop their own rituals and routines for praying.

I grew up in a family that said grace before every meal at home. That family ritual instilled in me an attitude of thankfulness for what I had received and I am sure played no small part in my subsequent quest to understand the life and operation of faith. Even there, I was called to prayer in the simple act of being called to eat. Countless times in my parish career, someone has said to me, “I feel I should pray about this.” The word “should” is the indicator of being called. An obligation is being invoked or a need is being expressed. One's attention turns from just myself to myself and something else - something greater, something bigger, something that I need in order to understand who I am.

So we receive the summons or possibly, we feel lured forward, outward. But, we are inevitably drawn toward a reality that not only includes us but is greater than we could have imagined. We may not know this as we start out, but we soon discover it. Frodo and Sam are not sure where their journey will take them when they set out upon the road that leads from Bag End, but they encounter more than they could have thought possible. Lucy and Edmond are not sure what they have stumbled upon when the go behind the wardrobe but they set off on a journey into a vast and mysterious and wondrous world. Huckleberry sets off on the great river not knowing where it will lead, but confronts a reality more complicated than he thought possible.

The list can go on; you can pick your own entries. The point is that we too set off on such journeys when we are summoned by whatever means to prayer. Journeys where we too will be called upon to act, to suffer, to grow, to sacrifice and finally to learn more about who we are and what we can do. In the end, that is what all good journeys do. They help us to become who we most truly are and what we are truly meant to be.

The image of a journey or a quest or a pilgrimage works best for this undertaking since it underscores its continuing nature. We don't experience its end on this side of the grave. We never have all the answers or all the solutions. We keep seeking them. Prayer becomes central to that journey and how it happens for you. It may be that the prayers of formal worship are enough for you to steer by, or you may need to engage more actively in your navigation. Or, you may find yourself anywhere along the line between those two. Whatever the case, prayer is an essential part of that endeavor in life we call faith. It will not give you proof. It may not even provide a lot of answers. Having prayer answered and getting answers are two different things. But it will see you through, it will give you a light to steer by and a course to follow.

I started this article with the image of questions being asked and have ended up at the notion of a journey of life, a life that quests after something. That is fitting since the two words spring from the same root. Asking questions can set us off on a quest, and that is one of the primary functions of prayer: to become the means by which we seek a higher and deeper relationship with the Creator.

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Based on the book The Elements of Prayer. © 2006 by Joe B. Jewell. Reprinted with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com or 800-972-6657, ext. 52. Joe Jewell has over thirty years experience as a Methodist pastor. He received a BA in philosophy and English from Vanderbilt University and a Th.M. from Boston University's School of Theology. Joe has been married for twenty-eight years to best-selling author Carla Neggers. They live in Vermont, where they raised two children.