Fr Peter Helman

"Cast all your anxiety on God, for he cares for you" (1 Peter 5:7)

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Dear friend,

There is nothing more natural to ourselves than prayer. That is an enormous assertion, I know, but so it is that God animates the world, thinks it into being, acts upon it as its soul. And we are most certainly part of the world and therefore part of the mind of God in as much as God’s mind lives in all the world. 
 
The writers of the New Testament speak of this mystery in various ways. “From God, to God, and through God are all things,” S. Paul tells us (Rom. 11:36). He says elsewhere (in a lengthier quote, if you would indulge me) that

"God, who made the world and everything in it [...] gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. [...] From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of their habitation, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him--though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For in God we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:24, 25b-28a). 

Our Daily Office epistle reading this morning uses a pastoral image of God who is the “chief shepherd” of souls, the one to whom all power is ascribed no less than the One on whom we cast our burdens (1 Peter 5:4).
 
Is this not the most peculiar and joyous thing about what Christians believe, that we are made for God and therefore made for God to pray in us? And what could that possibly mean except that our hearts reach in every moment for God our Creator, feel after him who is our life and our salvation? 
 
Prayer, of course, is also something we practice, with many aspects, if I could put it that way. However over-complicated we might feel the need to make it, though, prayer is simply putting ourselves near God and with God, knowing that God sees us in every moment for who we are. The impulse I often feel is to go to prayer only when the frame of heart is in tune, when the right words rise to meet me. But this is all rather distracting. God knows whereof we are made, and we bring all that we are and all that we have (or don't have) and offer it to God.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey put it this way in an address to ordination candidates: We put ourselves with him just as we are,

"in the feebleness of our concentration, in our lack of warmth and desire, not trying to manufacture pious thoughts or phrases. We put ourselves with God, empty perhaps, but hungry and thirsty for him; and if in sincerity we cannot say that we want God we can perhaps tell him that we want to want him; and if we cannot say even that perhaps we can say that we want to want to want him! Thus we can be very near God in our naked sincerity; and God will do the rest" (The Christian Priest Today).

Where ever we might find ourselves today, God is praying within us, drawing out from us a desire for God that is deeper than anything we knew was there and filling us with love and trust.

Join me today, wherever you are; find time for quietness and stillness to be near him and with him. God is to be found anywhere and everywhere, amid the ups and downs of life, even in the depths of our hearts. 


In Christ,
Fr. Peter