Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”.

• Matthew 26:41

Pray continually,

• 1 Thessalonians 5:17

“Everybody prays. Everybody always has. And there’s no end in sight.
“Prayer seems to be instinctive, a part of human nature. Primitive peoples and enlightened Westerners, rural homesteaders and urban-dwelling professionals, stay-at-home moms and touring musicians, insecure artists and ruthless investors, doubting atheists and devout creati0nists—they’re all praying. ln the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, ‘Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.’ We pray. We can’t help it.
“Prayer invites you to learn to listen to God before speaking, to ask like a child in your old age, to scream your questions in an angry tirade, to undress yourself in vulnerable confession, and to be loved—completely and totally loved, in spite of everything.
“And yet most people, even most Bible-believing Christians, find little life in prayer. Prayer is boring or obligatory or confusing or, most often, all of the above.”

• Tyler Staton, Praying like Monks, Living like Fools

When I read that first sentence, which you will find near the top of page three of the book, I thought, ‘No way!”

But have you not heard atheists cry out to the “void” and say, “I do not believe you exist, God!”?  If they did not believe God exists, who are they talking to?

There was a dialogue on The Big Bang Theory when his friends said about Sheldon Cooper that on a few occasions Sheldon was so sick that he called out to a deity that he did not believe in.  The line got laughs from the live audience, but Rev. Staton may be on to something.

It used to be that if you talked to yourself, you were considered crazy.  Lately, I have heard that if you talk to yourself and you enter into an argument, you are crazy.  I like to think of it this way, if you talk to yourself, and you enter into an argument, and you lose the argument … You still aren’t crazy.  God just won that round.

I do not know how many times I have written something in my head by talking, quoting snippets of Scripture, and knowing what scholar or author I might quote, doing it all aloud as I wash dishes or fold clothing when the drier has finished, and then I stop.  I then say, “Thank You, God, for all your help.  When I get back to the computer, this one is about done.”

The Sunday school class where I teach (teaching adults), I often get snickers when I pray at the beginning and/or ending of class.  I say what is on my mind, and, at times, my mind is cluttered with strange stuff, and I am sure the class is thinking, “Is this the way he talks to God all the time?!”

My reply could be, if they ever asked, “I can be formal in my prayers, but why not just talk to God?  If we were stiff and formal every time we pray, how can that be comfortable in pray continuously?  I am reverent in my address to God, but what happens next is simply talking to the most important person in my life.”

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.