Over the past month or so we’ve been adding a section called “Prayer Pointers” to our newsletter (and back of our Sunday bulletins). This space is for us to use as a springboard in growing a spiritual habit of prayer as a community by providing some reflections on prayer from the scriptures (or notable Christian) and then ending with a prayer for you to pray this week. You’re encouraged to use it as you will. This week I’ve decided to kill two birds with one stone and am using the space where I usually write a little blurb to simply be the prayer pointer for us. 

I picked up “Following Jesus” by Henri Nouwen off the library shelf the other day and started flipping through it. One of the first pages I came to was this small section on prayer and it hit me like a tonne of bricks so I’m going to leave it here for you to mull over this week:

I really want to ask you to practice prayer as a practice of the presence of God. You don’t have to say many words. You don’t have to have deep thoughts. You don’t have to worry about how to think. You can just be where you are and say, “I love you. I love you. I know you love me and I love you. I don’t have any big things to say. I don’t have any profound words to express, but I am here and I want you to be with me and I want to be with you.” It is that simple. It is a very simple thing. Prayer is not complicated. It is not difficult. If people ask you how you pray, just tell them, “Sit down and say, ‘Lord, here I am.'”

Distractions mean that we are being pulled into the past or into the future. That is what a distraction is. We start thinking about what happened yesterday or what is happening tomorrow. Distractions mean we are not yet fully here. We are not fully present yet. That is okay. You have to smile to yourself and say, “I am distracted. I am not fully here. I am not fully trusting. I am still all over the place. I want to pray, but I am still thinking about this person who got to me yesterday and I wish I could give her a little talk,” or “Tomorrow, I have to go to work and my son has to go to the hospital, and I have to see this person tomorrow to discuss a promotion.” Sure that is us–we are never totally here. If we were totally here we would be in heaven so are never totally here. We are a little bit in the past, a little bit in the future, and all over the place, actually.

But even so, it is very important to say, “I want to be more here because I know that you, God, are here. I know you love me. I know that all I need is here and therefore I am going to sit here for a moment and say thank you for being a faithful God, thank you for your name I AM. Thank you for your Son, Jesus, who came to be with us. Thank you for the Spirit, who dwells in me so deeply that I don’t even feel it all the time or experience it, but I know it. I know, just as I know that I am breathing without feeling that breath all the time, so I know that you, God, are with me even if I don’t feel it all the time.”

Lots of great gems in this extended quote from Nouwen but here’s what I’m drawing out of it this week:

• Prayer can and SHOULD be simple and honest. Just be real before God. Reminds me of Matthew 6:5–8
• It’s so easy to be distracted. In Nouwen’s day it was thinking about what happened yesterday or what’s about to happen tomorrow. For us in 2025 it’s those things but also the million digital distractions that abound all around. 
• It’s impossible to be fully present because to be fully present would mean we’re in heaven. This is HOPEFUL! 
• That doesn’t mean we can’t and shouldn’t still pursue being present. It’s the pursuit of presence that draws us into deeper connection with the Spirit.

A Prayer for this Week:

“Dear God, I want to be fully present to you. I want to hear you say to me, ‘You are my beloved.’ I want to feel your tender hand caressing me and to receive your love as the gift it is. But it is hard. So many voices, so many worries, so many distractions. Help me to push them gently aside—not with force or guilt, but with trust that what I most need is already given. Give me the grace to be still, to listen, and to simply be where I am—with You.” —Henri Nouwen