Holiness and prayer

We pray with every good intention. Through prayer we want to feel better or want to be better people or want to live a better life.

But prayer, Biblical prayer is about much more than that.

Prayer is to be with God, to experience God.

The Pharisee, Jesus taught us, had this feel-good-about-oneself idea about prayer. I pray to feel good that I am so good. And the tax collector could only cry out in sincere prayer about his despair and his yearning for the forgiving presence of God. All his prosperity, wealth, everything that made his life good, provided no reassurance to him and brought no peace in his conscience.

And yet, we are a bit careful and hesitant to enter God’s presence in prayer. To be with God? That is big. We fear it.

It reminds me of the silly joke about two guys visiting a strip club and ordering something to eat. “Will you say grace for us?” the one dutifully said to the other. “Are you crazy”, replied his friend. “I don’t want God to see we are here.”

Prayer brings us into the presence of God, but this divine holiness can be searching, scorching and searing. It cleanses, exorcises, heals and empowers. And we fear the pain of this process.

This is sad. If only we can realize that God’s holiness does not create anxiety, but awe. We stand in deep amazement before the attractive wholeness of God, before God who is so different than all our smutty talk and thoughts, before the One who is pure light, who lets us bathe in the light of sheer beauty and glory.

The alternative is grey, unattractive and even more painful. To pray to feel good – and to realize that your heart needs more. That all the good, the good, the moral perfection, the do-goodness, all the Pharisaic stuff are really nothing. It is where they come from that matters. It is only the One who is good who really matters and who bring our longing hearts to rest.

To be free, totally free, as God is, freed from our daily jealousies, hatred, envy, meanness, deviousness, anxieties. To be as God, holy, transformed by the divine power into a new life, liberated from sin, in the healing, loving and glorious presence of the holy God. To finally find peace where everything is holy.

Hallowed be thy name...