Monday, May 25, 2009

Prayer to the One Who Loves Us Most

One of the pastors of the church we attend in Los Angeles spoke this weekend about prayer. For the first 2/3 of the talk, I felt like I was attending a lecture at Fuller Seminary. It was a lot of factual information from the Greek about the early church and so on. I guess my attention span isn't what it used to be because I had a hard time paying attention.

Eventually, the pastor broke into the third part of her talk, telling us a story about the first time she met her first grandchild. It was endearing. It was funny. She told us about how this grandson is now 8 years old and wants her to tell him this story every time he sees her. He now has a little brother, and they want to hear the first-meeting stories over and over, trying to figure out who Gramma loves best based on her reaction to their sweet, infant selves.

I found myself tearing up, thinking about the day I get to tell Abe the story of the day we first met him, how he'll get to hear about the times each of his grandparents met him for the first time and how loved he is. This pastor then said that this is what prayer is: our getting close enough to God to let Him retell the story of what it was like when He first met us, how beautiful and funny we are to Him, how much He loves us. As our pastor said, when someone is telling us about how much they love us, we all want to hear more. The older we get, the more we feel that we're supposed to hide this impulse to hear about our belovedness, but we do want to hear. We want the conversation to continue; we want to hear more.

This image of our pastor telling her grandkids about how in love she was with them upon first meeting will, I think, be forever connected in my mind when I think of prayer. And it makes me want to pray more, not to ask for things but to listen and try to believe that I am loved the way a grandmother loves her grandson, even more so in fact.
a beloved grandson and child of God, eater of dirt and sticks.

5 comments:

Tracy said...

This is beautiful and so true!

Eryn said...

wow, love that picture of God wanting to retell the story of how he fell in love with us...so great! Thanks for sharing.

Tracy said...

Hi Ted and Lori! Thanks for stopping by our blog. :)

We lived in So Cal until just a few months ago, when we moved to TX. We love it here, but we just loved So Cal, too, and miss the beaches!!!

Amy B. said...

I love this. I was telling Nathan his "story" last night while I was rocking him. For the first time he looked into my eyes when I was telling him how much he is loved. Not that he gets it yet, but he was listening...

Amy

PVZ said...

I loved that story too...(we were at the 11:15)God has been shifting my notion of what prayer looks like yet again lately and this is part of the picture that will remain.