The Intimacy of Prayer

A guy gave this to me a few years back in Austria and I came across it today and thought it was worth sharing.

Nearly everyone believes in God and throws casual offhand remarks in his general direction from time to time. But prayer is something quite different. Suppose yourself at dinner with a person whom you very much want to be with - a friend, lover, a person important to you.

The dinner is in a fine restaurant where everything is arranged to give you a sense of privacy. There is adequate illumination at your table with everything else in shadow. You are aware of other persons and other activity in the room, but they do not intrude on your intimacy. There is talking and listening. There are moments of silence, full of meaning.

From time to time a waiter comes to your table. You ask questions of him; you place your order with him; you ask to have your glass refilled; you thank him for his attentive service and leave a tip. You depart, still in companionship with the person whom you have dined, but out on the street conversation is less personal, more casual.

That is a picture of prayer. The person with whom we set aside time for intimacy, for this deepest and most personal conversation is God. At such times the world is not banished, but it is in the shadows, on the periphery. Prayer is never complete and unrelieved soliture; it is, though, carefully protected and skilfully supported intimacy. Prayer is the desire to listen to God firsthand, to speak to God firsthand, and then setting aside the time and making arrangements to do it. It issues from the conviction that the living God is immensely important to me and that what goes on between us demands my exclusive attention.

But there is a parody of prayer that we engage in all too often. The detailss are the same but with two differences: the person across the table is Self and the waiter is God.
This waiter - God is essential but peripheral. You can't have dinner without him, but his is not an intimate participant in it. He is someone whom you give orders, make complaints, and maybe at the end, give thanks.
The person you are absorbed in is Self - your moods, your ideas, your interests, your satisfactions or lack of them. When you leave the restaurant you forget about the waiter until the next time. If it is a place to which you go regularly, you might even remember his name.