My Dear Shepherds,<\/p>\n\n
Pastors offer a lot of short prayers. We pray short prayers beside hospital beds and in church hallways, to begin and conclude meetings and dinners, before sermons and to wrap up counseling sessions. Often our words tumble out half-formed. We pray for the same things so often that we can’t help but fall back on clichés. Spur-of-the-moment prayers are part of our calling. The danger is that in becoming so repetitious they become lifeless. It’s an occupational hazard.<\/p>\n\n
We’re often expected to pray without advance notice. Not expecting<\/em> to pray and being unprepared<\/em> to pray are two different things. When I was a very young pastor, I remember a morning when I consciously resisted the Spirit’s prompting to spend time alone in private devotions. Late that afternoon, I got word that the father of a young woman in the Bible study I was about to lead had collapsed and died. It fell to me to tell her. I knew that my failure to pray that morning left me weak and wordless in that crisis. Jesus, of course, was merciful to me and her but it was a lesson I’ve never forgotten.<\/p>\n\n Impromptu prayers draw their life from our quiet times of deeper prayer. The Scripture we read gives us handholds in that spur-of-the-moment situation. We easily re-enter the quiet place where we’d been with the Lord. Our faith is still garden fresh. We’re not so much praying new prayers as we are adding another paragraph to our ongoing conversation with God.<\/p>\n\n Unexpected prayers are diluted by a verbal running start, sort of preliminary yammering. Now I try to be quiet long enough to find the Holy Spirit in my mind’s crowd. I try to think what is most needful for the soul I’m with. After all, short prayers don’t need to be rushed.<\/p>\n\n