Advent Devotions

Today’s author is Prince of Peace member Bob Reichman.

Acts 2: 1-21; Philippians 4: 4-7

I’m not very good at praying, especially out loud. I’m not proud of it, and I’m not ashamed of it, that’s just me. OK, I’m a little ashamed of it. You can ask some people to say a prayer, and they do it without flinching. It just flows from their mouths. Not so for me. It feels phony, it feels rote, it feels insincere. Maybe because my Catholic background left me with standard prayers, the “Our Father,” the “Hail Mary” and the rest, I never learned to pray from the heart. Whenever I pray out loud, I try to hit a few points and quickly get it over with. I imagine God’s eyes rolling.

I’m better at it privately, but it still feels artificial much of the time so I try to be conversational. I do make requests of God, as Paul suggests. But mostly, I ask God to help me to hear the Spirit when I have to discern between good and bad, good and better, and bad and worse. That last pairing is the one I, and I suppose most people, struggle with the most. Many times, there are no good choices and I have to live with that. I don’t have to like it, though.

There’s no question in my mind that the Spirit is guiding me (or trying to guide me; I can be a bit stubborn), my deficiencies in prayer notwithstanding. I think God, and therefore the Spirit, makes adjustments to the world as it is and aims for the best outcomes in all circumstances. None of us listens to God’s Spirit all the time, and some hardly ever do. Hence, the world we live in.

I’ve never experienced the Spirit as tongues of fire or been inspired to speak in tongues, as the disciples did. I’m actually grateful for that, because it sounds pretty scary. But subtlety always seemed to be lost on the disciples, so they probably needed it. You can understand why people in the crowd thought they were drunk. I probably would have thought so, too. But it was certainly a dramatic way to launch the disciples’ mission and get people’s attention.

Fortunately for us, the Spirit reaches us in ways both subtle and dramatic. It isn’t one size fits all. It’s there for those who are good at prayer, and for those who are not. It’s there for those who need tongues of fire, and for those who just need a nudge. God meets us and loves us as we are and sends us the Spirit’s voice in ways that we can hear. We just have to listen.

Prayer
God, as you know, I’m not very good at this part,
but I know you make allowances for that.
Please help me — and everyone – to listen sincerely
to your Spirit as it points us toward the best that we
can make of each moment toward a less broken
world filled with your love. Amen.