Conversation With God

Last fall, I spent two weekends out on Cow Island with the youth of St. Alban's.  I have a rule on church trips that no one eats until someone has said grace/thanksgiving/blessing over the meal.  And for the most part, I insist that whoever says that blessing must be under the age of 18.

The kids inevitably all stand there and stare at one another waiting for someone else to step up to the plate (this has been a trend throughout my youth ministry career).  On Cow Island, I asked the kids what was so hard about it, and one teenage boy responded that he couldn't speak "fancy enough" to say grace.  "It doesn't have to be fancy language," I replied, but this young man refused to believe me.  Eventually, he convinced me that he would pray the next day but he needed time to prepare something.

Sure enough, at breakfast the next morning, there he stood with a scrap of paper on which he'd pre-written his prayer.  And the language was indeed fancy...even this 21st Century teenager seemed to believe that the only way to talk to God was in the King James version of English.

In some ways, I think it is the blessing and the curse of the Book of Common Prayer.  We have this resource for prayer that is thoughtful and beautiful and poetic and gorgeous, but sometimes it has us convinced that when we talk to God, it HAS to be those things.  It has to be fancy.

But Nouwen's quote from Brother Lawrence hits the nail on the head - "Everyone is capable of such familiar conversation with God..."  It's innate within us.  All of us are naturals at talking to God as long as we speak with our own authentic voice.  So have a conversation with God today and make it as plain as you can.  God will still be glad for the chat!