WAY IN!

In the last blog I shared, I mentioned that I would in future blogs be trying to take a kind of ‘couch to 5k’ approach to developing our prayer life.  You may remember, I suggested last time that we should “start at the very beginning” which, of course, is where we truly are, and not instead where we would like others to think that we are.

To illustrate this point, can I tell you what happened when I first started working away from home in central London about twenty-five years ago? 

This inevitably involved my moving around a lot on the London Underground system.  I would weave my way through a maze of escalators and passenger tunnels, like a little hamster, before being confronted with a confusing poster, usually pasted onto the platform wall somewhere, which displayed to me the connection between every single underground station across the whole of the London Underground system.  

At first, I’d spend ages scanning the diagram to somehow locate which platform, and in which direction of travel I was currently facing compared to where I ought to be.  Getting this bit wrong would leave me having to jump off one train and then breathlessly scuttle down yet another passage to find the correct one.  It was a very hit and miss, stressful and exhausting process.  The poster map in question was the legendary Harry Beck classic design, never bettered, and still largely unchanged after decades of beloved use by millions of Londoners and visitors alike. 

So why was it so difficult for me to get my head around then?

The thing was, I just needed a ‘way in’ that was suitable for ME to understand it. 

The ‘Eureka moment’ came one time when I was, yet again, stood gawping at the dreaded diagram, when a young guy walked straight up to the poster, and with little or no hesitation at all, stuck his finger immediately on the relevant part of the map and said, “That’s where we are, Kings Cross”.  Then I finally ‘twigged’ how it was that he could do it so fast!  

The bit on the poster representing the tube station we were stood on at that point appeared very smudgy and dirty because, no doubt over the months and years that the poster had been on the wall there, thousands of people had stopped in front of it and, almost involuntary, shoved their finger onto the relevant bit of the map when they spotted the station name on the diagram. 

AHA!  It was easy then! From then on whichever station, I happened to be on, I could just look for the smudgy bit, or even in some more busy stations the bit where the map had been touched so often that it was worn through.  All I then had to do was follow Harry Becks’ genius design logic and it made complete sense.  In designing it Harry had dispensed with the usual mapping methods and instead drew a design that would enable you to quickly identify where you are, where you want to go, and what changes you need to make to get there.  Simple, logical, and uncluttered, it tells you precisely what you need to know when you’re fifty metres underneath the streets of London.

So, what’s that gotta do with kick starting a prayer habit?  It’s simply that we all know how much we pray and how important it is, or isn’t to us, in our day-by-day life. The prayer journey starts with putting our smudgy finger on exactly, and truly, where we are with sharing ourselves with God individually. 

“Yes but…that’s the problem Fred!  I don’t pray at all these days”.   We’ve all been there at one time or another haven’t we?    Start by expressing to God why you find prayer difficult or why you don’t even like the idea of taking time to pray.  Be honest, be real, be you.  If you’re angry at God tell him so.  In the Bible the Psalms are full of people letting off steam to God, expressing what they are feeling at that moment.  In the gospel of Matthew chapter six verse eight, Jesus said “…your Father knows what you need before you ask”.  We can’t shock God with anything he doesn’t already know.  about.   As you pray let it go, speak your mind, share your pain, ‘vent your spleen’, ‘give him both barrels’, he is the creator of the universe, he can take it.  

Have a go at reading Psalm 13 and Psalm 91 verse 15.  The person who wrote Psalm 13 begins with, “How long will you hide your face from me?”  They cry out to God in the middle of feeling that life is hopeless and dark and fraught with pain.  But by the end of the psalm their mood begins to change, “But I trust in your unfailing love, my heart rejoices in your salvation”.  Praying from the reality of your present experience can be merely the first stage of connecting with God, in other words your ‘way in’!  Don’t wait until you feel up to praying, start by telling God precisely how you feel and why you don’t feel up to it.  As they used to tell us at school, “show your working out”.  

By Fred Wright 12th July 2023