Alan Bennett, the English playwright who wrote “The Madness of King George,” has a line in his autobiography that needs sharing. He says, “The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it’s on the Sunday afternoons of life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.”
Isn’t it so! The Sunday afternoons, the et cetera parts of life, those flat places where there’s nothing of interest in sight and no visible curves in the road around which something wonderful might be about to appear. The spirit does falter, and whisper of “why bother” and “what’s the use” echo in our ear.
Those are the times we have the least heart for praying, but they are the times we most need to pray. Why? Because those are the days we most need to see the world through God’s eyes. That is where good prayer always starts, trusting God enough to let go and look through his eyes - the eyes of a wise father. If we do that and if our hearts are open, we’ll begin to see what God sees, and hope as God hopes. We’ll begin to want what God wants, and do what God does.
That’s what prayer in faith does inside us. It slowly reshapes our ideas and our perspectives to match God’s, slowly reshapes our values and our expectations of life to match God’s.
Ever so slowly praying changes us, and in time it even changes the way we pray. And precisely because real change comes only gradually, we have to stick with that inner conversation with our Lord, even and especially on the Sunday afternoons of life - which sometimes last all week long!
My friends, God has so much to show us and to teach us. We have so much to learn, so many new doors that need to be opened, and so many old ones that need to be closed permanently.
So where do we begin? By telling God our story once again, all the parts of it this time, both the grim and the bright. And then by speaking the words the prophet Samuel spoke in darkest night so long ago, “Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening.” If we are listening from the heart, we will change. Even the most gnarled parts of us can be transformed and changed! “Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening!”