While a Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) in New Orleans, I started reading Brother Lawrence’s “The Practice of the Presence of God.” I was going through a time when it was difficult for me to find God in the ordinary areas of my life and it was becoming more difficult for me to understand how a loving God could exist in today’s world. Brother Lawrence lived a simple life; he found ways to see the face of God in nature and experience God’s presence while doing something as ordinary as peeling potatoes. He knew that no matter where he was or what he was doing, God gave him the power and wisdom to experience the divine with a humble and grateful heart. I was aching to experience life in the same way as Brother Lawrence.
Through community meetings with my YAV housemates as we practiced meditation, lectio divina and explored other ways to experience God, I was reminded of the true nature of prayer. We might not hear a direct answer from God, see our prayers answered immediately or even see them answered in the way we wish, but as Rob Bell stated in his “Open” NOOMA video, prayer “is tapping into the same energy that created the universe – prayer changes us.” Prayer changes us by drawing us closer to the presence of God. Brother Lawrence discovered that, through prayer, every single human has the ability to tap into the open space within us that welcomes the divine. Through prayer, we open ourselves to feeling God’s love, justice and mercy filling our bones with a desire for change in our suffering world. We ask, whether through silence or conversation, for God to make a change in us. I’ve been learning that it is time for me to stop asking God to feed someone who is hungry when I have plenty of food to share.
During one of the first weeks after my YAV service, I found myself attending an International Day of Peace service with the Edinburgh Interfaith Association. We joined in a Hindu worship service, meditated on words from the Qur’an and recited words about reconciliation and justice from the Christian faith. In the midst of a world that is suffering, it felt appropriate to join together in prayer with eight other religious traditions. There was a strong sense of community created during the service as each leader offered words of praise and petition to God.
I was struck the most by the Jewish prayer that began by saying, “It is not enough to pray for peace.” It made me call into question how much change is made in the world when we add a #PrayForTheWorld hashtag to our Instagram pages without allowing God to change us and to put our words into actions so that we work with our communities and neighbors to create a more peaceful and just world. It is important to sacrifice our own desires and pray that God will give us the strength and confidence to be peacemakers of mutual understanding and respect. If we all were to open ourselves in prayer to experiencing the divine in every little moment, I wonder how much the world would change.
Hillary Leslie is a Young Adult Volunteer alum currently living in Edinburgh, Scotland, as the youth worker for Mayfield Salisbury Parish Church.
