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Prayer Dare: Praying Outdoors

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Psalm 104                          7.10.16

We have to just stop and recognize the horror which has flooded our country this week.  We seem to go from one total disregard for the value of human life to another in city after city across our nation.  Our city itself  is no stranger to this twisted way of looking at the creations of God we call human beings, human beings who also are brothers, sisters, fathers, sons, mothers or daughters– looking at humans as expendable.   People who think other people are expendable forget that every person has people who love him, every person has people who depend on her, every person has gifts to share and work to do to contribute to the society at large.  People are not expendable.  People cannot be replaced.  When a life is snuffed out without cause, when hatred holds a gun, we are all impacted.  It takes its toll.  Fear and mistrust ratchet up.  Gun sales go up.  In a week like this past one, we start to wonder, where is God?  Where are God’s people?  What happened to respect and love and peace?

Sometimes we feel like banging on God’s door demanding that something be done.  We cry out with the words of the psalmist:  let wickedness be no more. We want justice for all those who are victims of injustice or discrimination, those who are ignored, set aside, rejected–whether due to sexual preference, skin color, language, age, or physical ability.  We want answers.  We want changes so that all people will see others as valued creations of God, deserving of life and care and love and hope for a future.  Last week our prayer dare was to pray justice by living justice.  I saw a beautiful photo which emodies living justice.  It was of a black woman and her children with a white police officer.  She had stopped, they got out of their car, approached the officer sitting in his patrol car and asked if they could pray for him.  Living justice.  What a week when prayers for justice were needed.  What a week for prayer.

Today my prayer dare for you is praying outdoors.  My original inspiration was Psalm 104, a litany of praise to God for all the variety of creation which surrounds us.  The psalmist understands God not only as the creator of it all, but the one who continues to provide for the ongoing needs of all creatures… water and food, sunlight and darkness, shelter and rest.  It is a long psalm, and we have been spreading it out throughout our worship service today.  Praying outdoors, with creation staring us in the face, keeps us in a grateful mindset, and calls us to better care for the creation of which we are a part.   I will get back to that kind of private outdoor prayer in a moment.

First, let me suggest another way to pray outdoors.  That is, to pray visibly, openly, in some kind of public space.  In a restaurant, at a bus stop, in front of the grocery store, with a stranger.  Our prayer dare for this week can take this direction–  praying outdoors in public.  A  dare requires you to try something hard or new or uncomfortable.  So when I ask you next Sunday, “how did you pray outdoors this week?”, you might describe praying outdoors in public or praying outdoors in private, but don’t list the things you already do on a regular basis.  I want to hear about something new you tried.

Praying publicly is uncomfortable for some people.  I remember the prayer walk some of us took on Good Friday.  We joined walkers from multiple churches, carrying a cross, stopping to pray for and with people along the way.  It was not a typical Presbyterian prayer practice.  We do pray for the residents of our city–we tend to do it from the safety of our sanctuary or our own homes.  Praying for the residents of our city face to face took us a bit out of our comfort zone as we interacted with strangers, being a visible presence for Christ in Edmondson Village shopping center.   You might follow that model to take up the prayer dare this week.  Try it in your own neighborhood.  Walk around the block.  Stop to pray in front of each house.  Engage a neighbor for more than a wave and a “good morning!”.  Ask her if there is anything she needs prayer for.  Or, to be more daring, do it in another neighborhood.  Go with a friend.  Talk together with God about the needs you see or can imagine.

Or if you go out to eat this week, take time to pray before your meal with those who are with you, or even by yourself.  I don’t mean a silent “thank you for this food, Lord”  while you reach for the salt and pepper.  I mean taking a moment to really stop and give thanks.  Thanks for the food.  Many in this world survive on minimal food intake on a daily basis. Thanks for the luxury of eating out.  Not everyone has the ability to go out to eat when they want.  Thanks for a comfortable place to sit.  Not everyone has a place to be cool on these hot summer days.  If you need encouragement to try this kind of prayer, come meet me at Tabba Tabba on Friday and we will pray together in the coffee shop.

Praying outdoors can be visible and obvious, public.  Praying outdoors can also be very private.  You can find a quiet place outside in your backyard, in the playground at your apartment complex, on your front porch, some green space near your workplace.  One church member loves to step out on her 7th floor balcony overlooking the city of Baltimore for her  prayer time with God.  You can go to a city park or to the beach or to the mountains or to a farm.  We have a fantastic green space just at the bottom of the hill here in Leakin Park.  Go where you can be outside and connect in some way with the creation God has provided for us, the creation we truly cannot do without.

My dare for you today is to get outside to pray.  I know it is hot.  So find a time in the early morning or in the evening when the sun is not so hot.  Set aside a dedicated time and place.  Be intentional.  If you need to, put it on your calendar where you will see it.  Looking outside through your window does not count!  It is not the same.  Looking with your eyes only means you will miss a lot.  Get outside!

When you get outside, reread Psalm 104.  Or try Psalm 8.  Or Psalm 147.  Start with the scripture in your hand or start with the message of God you can see, hear, touch and smell around you.  Start with thanks.  Thanks to God for what you can hear, or the cool breeze you feel or the warm sun on your back.  Move to recognizing your own shortcomings in the way you treat any part of God’s beloved creation– people included.  How have you had disregard for God’s creation?  For people you have interacted with?   And then to petitions.  Where do you see hurt, pain, distrust, harm, abuse happening in this creation?  What do you want to say to God about those people, places and issues?

I’ll be curious to learn from you next week if you took my prayer dare.  Dares are not requirements.  You don’t have to take a dare.  But if you do, if you try prayer in a new setting– outdoors publicly or outdoors privately,  I’ll be curious to learn if you noticed anything different in praying outdoors.  Is it worth repeating again?  You just might find a new prayer practice that will be a part of your routine in the future.  You just might begin to see God’s hand at work in some new way.  I dare you!

What Do You See?

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2 Corinthians 4:16-5:10                      What do you see?                                           6/12/16

Some of you may not know Almeda Lewis.  She and her family were the first black family to move into her block of Rokeby Rd. back here behind the church in 1968.  She became a member of Hunting Ridge in 1999.  She was an ordained ruling elder.  But in my 5 years here, she has not once set foot in this building due to her failing health.  Our only contact with her has been through calls or visits to her.  Almeda Lewis had a birthday one week before she died.  She was 94.  For the past several years she has basically been living in a bed.  In a bed in a room in a care facility.  In a bed because her body was wasting away.  Already thin, she got thinner and thinner and weaker and weaker.  The outer nature, the physical body, the “tent” she was living in for 94 years, was coming to the end of its usefulness.  Her family knew it.  She knew it.  In recent weeks, she and they knew it was soon time to move into the house built by God.  She would be moving into the permanent house that cannot be seen from here.

As we talked together this week, Almeda and I wondered about what that house might look like.  She was sure it would be big.  I was sure it would be comfortable.  We both agreed there would be a lot of music going on.  And that we will be welcomed with open arms.  Living in God’s house will clearly be different from living in a tent.  Like those clay pots we talked about last week, tents are temporary.  The apostle Paul offers encouragement to his peeps in Corinth, telling them not to lose heart, to be confident.  To be confident that there is a lot more to life than what meets the eye.  To be confident that there is a house not built by human hands which is always ready for move-in day.  There is a song by Audio Adrenaline in our summertime Faith Place on Friday curriculum called Big House, imagining what this house not made with human hands might be like.  Maybe you know it.  Here is part of it:  Come and go with me to my Father’s house.  It’s a big big house    With lots and lots a room   A big big table   With lots and lots of food   A big big yard   Where we can play football  A big big house    It’s my Father’s house.

A big house means lots of room.  And its a big house you don’t have to worry about cleaning or furnishing or maintaining.  It’s a  big house filled with people you have never met who are family you’ve always known.  A big house where you fit right in.  Be confident, says Paul.  Whatever you are struggling with while you are housed in this body—this tent—is not going to last forever.  What you see is not what you get.  There is so much more to life than what you can see.

This week I had the opportunity to speak with the woman who leads the African dance ensemble which performed at the Strawberry Festival last week, Jewel Wilson.   She raved about the event, the diversity of the crowd, and the joy of being a part of it.  Then she said—there was a lot more going on that you could not see.  She meant that perceptions were being challenged and barriers were being cracked.  People from different neighborhoods laughed, jump-roped, and danced together.  There was the universal attraction to the drums which she was used to seeing, I am sure.  But then there was the black woman showing the white teens how she jumps rope.  There was the older white guy working the grill next to the young black guy.  There were brown and black and white hands serving side by side as you collected your hamburger and chips.  If you were a kid living in an all black or an all white neighborhood, you saw something very different on our front lawn than what you see every day when you walk out your door.  You really got a picture of life in God’s big, big house on God’s big, big lawn.  There was a lot more going on than we could see.

Paul wants his readers to be reminded that this is not all there is.  When we look around at the level of violence, the amount of trash on the streets, the drug deals that happen boldly in front of our eyes, police officers being tried for murder, and the number of people needing food from 40 West, (which, by the way, is in great need of food for the pantry shelves—make a mental note to bring canned or dry goods with you to church next Sunday)—when we see all that is going on around us physically, we can get depressed or angry or both.  Angry is better, because then there is more chance we will do something about it.  When we simply look at the world around us and see it as a lost cause, we are letting the visible control the invisible. What can be seen is temporary.  It is what cannot be seen that is lasting.   Paul says, we walk by faith, not by sight.  That means we don’t let what we see limit our forward direction.  God works in ways you can not see.  God works on renewing the inner nature, the part unseen.

Let me offer a couple of examples.  God has done something to the Hernan family to make them work their summer schedule around taking a return trip to serve at the Lakota Reservation in Minnesota  later this summer.  That includes lots of meetings, trainings and even reading a book to learn more about native American culture.  God has done something to those adults who have agreed to teach this summer in our Faith Place on Fridays experiment, creating a willingness to give up Friday nights, to prepare for a lesson, and to better get to know a teaching partner.  At first glance, you might think a crowd of 30 kids is just a noisy crowd.  But 30 kids saw on Friday night that adults care about them, that the church is a comfortable place to play and learn and use their creative abilities.

Perhaps walking by faith means staying attuned to what is going on under the surface, recognizing that there is always a lot more going on than what you can see on the outside.  Walking by faith involves a level of trust in God and God’s hand at work all around you.  It is possible to breeze through life and not notice God’s hand.  It is possible to think that what you see is what you get, and nothing more.  I choose to walk by faith, to not only trust what I can see, but trust the One who helps me to see different possibilities, different outcomes, different gifts at work.  What do you see?  Amen.