Prayer is a language unto itself, but it also uses language, and not unlike the emails and Facebook status you may have checked before reading this, it is language which, while it can be visibly seen, usually isn’t.
The reason is that most of our prayers are spoken, or perhaps cried out, or even breathed.
Still, some of you keep a journal where your prayers are written out. Seeing them often makes what is an invisible practice more tangible.
Others of you perhaps have been in a service where you wrote an immediate need or a long-term longing of your heart on a sticky note which you brought forward and placed on something at the front of a church sanctuary or perhaps on a piece of colored paper which you pinned to a wooden cross.
Seeing the above scene in Europe* reminded me of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Wikipedia reminds us that,
Today, more than a million prayer notes or wishes are placed in the Western Wall each year. Notes that are placed in the Wall are written in just about any language and format. Their lengths vary from a few words to very long requests. They include poems and Biblical verses. They are written on a wide variety of papers, including colored paper, notebook paper and even bubblegum wrappers, using a variety of inks.
Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, Rabbi of the Western Wall, receives hundreds of letters yearly addressed to “God, Jerusalem“; he folds these letters and places them, too, in the Wall.
Online services offer petitioners the opportunity to send their notes to the Western Wall via e-mail, fax, text messaging and Internet; the note is then printed out and inserted in the Wall. The Israeli Telephone Company has established such a fax service, as have a number of charitable websites.
But the above replica (if that’s what was intended) is made of plaster covered over with chicken wire, in a place available to all people all the time.
It’s a more tangible expression of what we might normally just say, and then the element of walking away, and leaving our request with God is also significant.
Some churches have a prayer request book in the lobby. Others have an email to which you can send requests. Still others will share requests in the main weekend service, although that practice is widely disappearing.
Does your congregation have a vehicle whereby you put either a physical or a community presence to your petitions to God?
*Picture above, taken by Ruth, is of the Heiliggeistkirche Lutheran Church in Heidelberg, Germany
Thinking Out Loud 
What Really Matters to You Right Now?
Sometimes a topic intersects an area of personal interest. Other times, I think of something clever — okay, at least I think it’s clever — to add as a short comment. But the next day that blog will be off on a different subject which really isn’t something I see as critical to my own personal walk with Jesus.
Many Christian blogs are caught up in discussions that make your head spin. I love surveying the issues and seeing what matters to some people. (A blog like Internet Monk — see the blogroll — will do that for you and give you a crash course in theological hot topics.) But often I feel like this is someone else’s discussion. Maybe I just haven’t reached a level of spiritual maturity to burden myself with certain topics. Or maybe — and this is a BIG maybe — they haven’t written their argument in such a way as to evoke from me a response out of the depth of my understanding and connection to that particular concern.
So…what really matters to you right now? What topic would you like to find on a Christian blog that would hit you right where you’re living at this moment?
Break up into groups of 3-4 and discuss; OR leave a comment! (Or both!)