About 15 years ago, the movie “Kingdom of
Heaven” (with Orlando Bloom) hit theaters – about a blacksmith who goes off to
fight in one of the Crusades against the Muslims. There’s
a scene where a knight/leader is showing Orlando Bloom’s character around in the
city of Jerusalem. As they talk atop one
of the walls of the Holy City, the camera rests on a large group of Muslim men
in rows, praying on their prayer rugs. At
that point, Orlando’s character asks about the relationship between the Muslim’s
and the Christians living side-by-side in Jerusalem.
That got me to thinking about
our day, about how we live the faith… overtly
live the faith… how we make our faiths real to us on a daily basis… or
not.
Back to 1992, my wife and I attended
a local Lutheran church in El Paso, Texas.
We helped teach Sunday School, but there wasn’t a lot of room in the education
space, so on Sunday mornings, different classes ended up using different areas
of the same large room.
One particular Sunday I
remember one of the other teachers was showing her very young students a book
about other world religions. She got to some pictures of Muslim men
praying on their prayer rugs, and she said something like “Look at
this. Isn’t this silly to be praying like that?”
She made a few other comments
to the little kids about this picture, making the point this mode of prayer was
not only less valid (than the way she knew perhaps), but silly and
pointless. I think in her ignorance she didn’t know that she
was criticizing her own Christian tradition.
Christianity has a long tradition
(now almost dead through lack of practice ironically) of segregating certain
times of the day for prayer. It’s called “Praying the Hours”– where
prayer times divided throughout the day help the pray-er take time to be with
God… and hopefully be more open to God’s presence more throughout the day as
well. But, again, almost no one does this anymore. But,
even if this weren’t in our own tradition… how can any form of prayer be silly,
pointless, or less valid than any other
method?
During President Obama’s tenure,
there were some spurious claims that he was a closeted Muslim (when he wasn’t
going to church, that is). One
commentator addressed this saying if President Obama were a practicing Muslim,
we all would have known it by then… because he would have taken time to pray. Whether praying privately or opening, it’s
kind of hard to hide your faith in this way.
The Muslim faith calls its
adherents toward overt actions. One of them is the call to pray
five times a day. In those five times, observant Muslims are called to stop
what they are doing, prepare themselves for prayer (this involves ritual hand
and feet washing) and then actually take time to pray… to consciously be with
God!
That scene in the movie struck
me… again… how little time we take – concerted time – time specifically set
apart – to consciously be in the presence of God. It’s so easy for us to pray while doing something else – squeezing God-time in between items on our daily agendas!
Back at the Army Chaplain School,
20 years ago, I had chance to be with people from a whole bunch of different
traditions… I learned a lot, and really enjoyed my time there. We had a chance to learn about each other’s
traditions, to participate in worship services other than our own. There were powerful words, music,
chanting. All in all a very powerful time of learning and
growth. God is the God of all for sure!
One of the guys in my squad (and
one of the few in our class of 70) was a Muslim – Lieutenant Mohamed. Out on a Field Training Exercise (FTX), the
first evening, LT Muhammed (a black American from the Midwest) asked me
where East was as he pulled out his prayer rug. I looked at the compass on my watch-band and
indicated where it was. He began to
prepare himself for prayer, and then he prayed.
And then he took time for prayer.
A lot of Islamic examples in
this writing, but the thing is, that scene stuck with me. It
brought back a lot of memories… it reminded me... to take time. It
reminded me how it’s SO EASY to FORGET to take time… how it’s
so easy to NOT pray. It reminded me that prayer can
often be what we make of it… and although praying “on the go” isn’t bad – sure,
it’s still prayer… prayer can certainly be so much more!
I wonder how much more it could
be for us if we were conscious to take time to prepare our bodies, our hearts,
our minds, before we present ourselves to God? I wonder how
much more our prayer times could be if we took time to stand, or sit, or lower
yourself before the Almighty God… and remember! And
what would it take (from us – our time, our schedule) to make this into a
life-practice? Is what this would add to our lives worth the things
it would cost us to put this into practice?
No comments:
Post a Comment