My ridiculous prayers

So I’m riding through the woods & in my head I’m praising God for hills & the regenerative effect hills have on my mind and body.   These Cotswolds are like molehills compared to His Lakeland fells and His Lakeland fells are like pimples compared with His Himalayas.. And I suddenly realise that I am praying in my public voice, in my head. How ridiculous does that sound to the creator and sustainer of the universe? 

Everyone who writes or speaks for a living has a public voice.  We order and moderate our thoughts before they become words and develop patterns of speech which help us to do this.  We save time by summarising and choose our words for a target audience, to make communication impactful, beautiful or memorable.  I think this expedient rather than hypocritical.  What matters is that there is a straight-ish line between the beliefs of the inner world and the aims and techniques of the language.  I do wonder sometimes where my public voice stops and where my private one starts though.  I know that God is not impressed by big words. 

Before a word is on my tongue O Lord, you know it completely.

The books I read make me painfully aware of my own ignorance.   This year, Mark Boyle persuaded me that I don’t know my own garden all that well, Michelle Obama made me realise I had no idea what it is like to be a black woman, James O’Brien convinced me that I really haven’t had much of a handle on British Politics over the last 10 years and Andrew Wilson uncovered the extent of my ignorance as to why I’m so weird.  Despite reading the bible every day for 30+ years, I still regularly discover things I have never noticed before.    I find it mildly depressing how little a 49 year old me knows and understands.    C.S. Lewis’ words about how his own mind – “how much of total reality can such an apparatus let through” resonate more and more strongly with me every passing year.  I know that God will not be wowed by my insights. 

How precious to me are your thoughts, God!  How vast is the sum of them!  Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand — when I awake, I am still with you.

Despite my lack of self-knowledge and my near-universal ignorance, God invites me into a relationship of prayer with him.  Sometimes my words will be few, like Qoholeth said.  Sometimes they will be full of colour and emotion, like the ones David sang.  Either way I’m grateful to Jesus for modelling prayer, the Father for inviting prayer and the Spirit for interceding.  So I stop worrying about whether I am praying in my public voice or private voice – God knows my heart anyway.

I love Pete Grieg’s story of the time his son brought him his first scribbles and said ‘read it daddy’.  Grieg read his son’s face and said what he saw there, to which the boy replied ‘well done Daddy’.  The scribbles took pride of place on the fridge.  I hope my prayers, public, private and in-between are scribbles for God’s fridge.