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This week for our devotions, Pastor Brook is looking at several quotes from the book “Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep.” This is a book we are studying through the Lent and Easter Season. Our first gathering is on Monday, March 11th at 7pm at the church.
“It is better to come to God with sharp words than to remain distant from him, never voicing our doubts and disappointments. Better to rage at the Creator than to smolder in polite devotion. God did not smite the psalmist. Through the Psalms, he dares us to speak to him bluntly.”
― Tish Harrison Warren, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep
I grew up in the age of the great public prayer! The prayer that was elegant and full of flowery words that I didn’t understand, but that sounded so beautiful. My dad, who was a pastor, was very good at these prayers. I remember him staying up late on a Saturday night writing them. They were almost more important to him than the sermon!
But then things changed! My sister died in a car accident! And on the first Sunday after her death, my dad said a public prayer that I will never forget. Two things happened in that prayer: My dad shouted in anger at God, and he cried tear after tear in grief. Indeed, he cried so much that the whole community felt moved to stand and gather round him and join him. As his child, I never felt more surrounded by love than when my dad dared to pray from his broken heart.
May we all learn to just tell it like it is in our prayers!
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