Prayer is a mystery. Iāve often heard people saying, with a sneer, āIt doesnāt go beyond the ceiling, you know.ā But the point of prayer, at least the way Jesus saw it, is that it doesnāt have to. Your father, he says, is there in the secret place with you. He sees and knows your deepest thoughts and hopes and fears. He hears the words you say. He hears, too, the things you canāt put into words but want to lay before him anyway. Prayer, in fact, isnāt a mystery in the sense of āa puzzle we canāt understandā. Prayer is a symptom, a sign, of the mystery: the fact that heaven and earth actually mingle together. There are times when they interlock; there are places where they overlap. To pray, in this sense, is to claim a time and place ā it can be anywhere, any time ā as one of those times, one of those places.
If prayer is about heaven and earth overlapping in time and space, itās also about them coming together in matter, in the stuff of this world, the clay from which we are made. To pray, in this sense, is to claim ā think about it and realize just how daring this is! ā that the living God, enthroned in heaven, can make his home with you, within you. To make this point vividly, go into your room in secret and pray there. Take God seriously.
But, when you do so, realize one more thing. If prayer is about heaven and earth coming together at one time, in one place, within the lump of clay we call āmeā, then itās going to change this person called āmeā. In particular, itās going to make me a forgiver. Jesus was quite clear about this. All of us have been hurt, wounded, slighted, annoyed by other people. How much more have we ourselves done that to God! Yet we want him to be with us, to hear us, and ā yes! ā to forgive us. How can we not be forgivers too?
So the great prayer comes together. Utterly simple, utterly profound. A child can learn it; an old, wise saint will still be going deeper into it. Heaven is not far away, and itās where we meet the God who, with breathtaking confidence, we can call āFatherā. Familiarity must not imply contempt. His very name is holy, and we must honour it as such. And what we most want ā the strange phenomenon of which prayer itself is a supreme example! ā is that his kingdom should come and his will be done on earth as in heaven. When we pray, we pray for that goal but we also pray within that promise.
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