20/06/2017

Good morning.

There’s doing what we do for our day job for people with whom we have a professional relationship, and then there’s doing it every so often by special request for those with whom we’re more closely acquainted. I’ve met people from all sorts of walks of life who testify to a raising of stakes and a rising of stress when it’s not the general public requiring their services but their nearest and dearest. I’d have to say: me too. Leading worship, preaching and, perhaps especially praying all feel different when they involve close friends and family.

It simply never entered my mind growing up, that I would find myself with a hands-on role in the weddings, baptisms and funerals of my loved ones. But what’s taken most getting used to, and I’m not there yet, are those less formal and more intimate kith and kin moments when I’ve been called on without warning to give thanks or say a grace or invoke a blessing or even to pray a commendation for someone nearing death. Both the pleasure and the pain of course lie in them knowing me and me knowing them.

But while my first instinct has often been not to let that make a difference, far better those times when it has, when a sharing of experiences, memories and feelings has been acknowledged, so that my spoken prayer of gratitude, petition can be allowed to thread its way through the lives we’ve lived in common to reach God with an emotion and authenticity that leaves words far behind.

God of relationships: it’s in our loves and losses, our disclosures and discoveries that we know others and are known ourselves. Lord never let us settle for prayer that is less than open, real and unadorned.

Amen