"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words."
(This is a follow up to my previous sharing about prayer. There are five main encounters that have captured my attention regarding my issue on prayer lately.)
#1 - Hours after my first entry on prayer, my pastor preached on times where he himself, the father, and his son would sit in silence. He also reminded us to go to our Father with a childlike heart. I was then gifted with Paul Miller’s “A Praying Life” and have been working through it.
Silence.
It relived me to learn that it’s not only one person who is silent sometimes.
Thus, there was a bit of comfort knowing both parties can be comfortably silent.
Feeling okay throughout silence is drastically different from knowing it is okay to be the silent one.
Perhaps me being uncomfortable with silence reflects a bit about my relationship with God.
#2 - Silence by Endo, Shusaku
Interestingly enough, I recently finished Silence・沈黙 (was reading it in Chinese…) and I recall the part where he contemplates praying with reality before his eyes, but he prays anyways.
That really stuck with me.
#3 - The following week after the sermon on prayer, I met up with my friend L-san at a park. She said she has been getting a lot of God’s “しーん” (a Japanese expression of dead silence). Then she continued to share about her constant regret of not praying at this one important moment in the past. I thought these so called “I should’ve prayed during ____” moments are incredibly intriguing. What are mine?
#4 - Later that week, on a phone call with a sister from church, I told her that I didn’t know what to pray for….to which she responded with “it’s a blessing to not have anything to pray for sometimes, to be in a place where you can just praise, it’s a gift to be in this place.”
Was that true? Or did I lack the desire to pray for myself?
#5 - On a BICF Cantonese sermon/podcast, the pastor shares that sometimes we don’t know what we want or need; that it is okay to be silent during those times. “Just let the Holy Spirit work!” he said.
So is that it? Have I come to a full circle?
And. I tried that for a while.....Sitting in silence before God saying,
“I want to pray something for myself, but, I don’t know what….so….yah.”
“しーん”
