How God Sometimes Uses Prayer

Tuesday morning, 10am. I knock. She answers. Her little black head-covering used to speak more loudly, but that was back before I really knew her, when I barely knew her name.

She offers me a seat at the table and hands me some coffee. We have a new knowing, a comfortable friendliness that reaches into the quieter places in my soul and fills me with a different kind of quiet. As if the unruffled still of her heart has leaked out and into her home, around the table where I now sit, and it touches me, too. So I embrace this quiet calm that exudes from her home, from her very demeanor. A new friend, different from every other friend I have ever known but comfortable just the same.

She opens her home to me every other Tuesday. We talk about family, about life, about school. And we pray together.

It’s a stretch for her, a new experience to pray out loud. She grew up Amish and only ever prayed in silence until the past few years. Now she lives differently, knows Jesus’ grace with authentic faith. Her quiet spirit offers hushed tones of reverence as she offers our Heavenly Father the requests we’ve spoken of. And God uses the repose of her voice to remind me that He is ever-so-worthy of silent awe.

I think of how often I approach Him with almost a casual rudeness. As if our familiarity somehow allows for irreverence. How easily I forget that the One I approach is Creator God, Almighty King, my Heavenly Father. I often lose sight of the amazed when I think of how He knows me and loves me anyway. Somehow I get all caught up in me and forget it’s all about Him, this love He has for me.

I sit with my eyes closed at this table with my friend, and my heart stills. The reverence of the One in Whose Presence we now sit, mixed with the warm cozy of my friend’s kitchen feels like a perfect formula for authentic awe. I sit with my head bowed and my hands in my lap, and I soak it all in. I ask God for His mercy, beg Father for His help, that I might not forget the still, the awe, the wonder that is Him.

I drive home after our hour together, my friend’s and mine. And my heart feels content, ready for the work that will greet me at the door. I think of the things we prayed about, the requests we offered to God Himself. I wonder how He’ll answer each one. And then it hits me: today He used prayer to show me what He likes. This morning, He used my friend’s hushed and reverent praying to show me more of Who He is, more of what He wants from me.

And I am in awe at how perfectly He works.