Prayer as Opportunity Not Obligation

“Everybody talking ’bout, nobody going there — heaven.” Those are the words that start an old spiritual. There are more words to it, but that is the refrain. It’s an interesting refrain because talking about it isn’t the same as doing something about it. There are lots of implications from the refrain, but I’m going to choose to use that implication. “Everybody talking ’bout, nobody going there — heaven.” Essentially, if you’re going to take a trip, you have to make some sort of preparation. And if you’re going to heaven or if you intend to go to heaven, if you intend to go towards that which you imagine as heaven — let’s call it enlightenment — there has to be some sort of preparation that has to go on in the effort to accomplish that goal. And we have to ask ourselves what is the effort that we’re involved in. What do we do to make it possible for us to be in an appropriate state to touch that thing we call heaven, to touch that thing we call enlightenment, to touch that thing we call reality? What have we done for ourselves to put ourselves in a place where that’s feasible? Or do we just talk about it? Do we just give it lip-service? Do we just sit around and discuss it?

If you have a very good friend, you would be spending time with that friend because you like being in that friend’s presence. If you want to make God your friend, you need to spend time with Him. You need to put yourself in His presence. And how do you put yourself in His presence? There are the prescribed ways, which are prayer. And prayer is, at the very least, if you trying to do some kind of formalist prayer…prayer is, at the very least, the setting forth of an intention that during certain times of the day, I am setting my being aside for God, for Allah, for the position that I’m taking that in my life, this is important enough for me to stop whatever I’m doing in order to have some sort of relationship with God.

Now, that relationship is at different levels of depth because if the relationship is merely showing up at a place and that is considered a sufficient action by you, then that will get you one set of accomplishments. It will be an accomplishment that you’ve formed a habit that you stop during the day and you go somewhere to establish a relationship with God. How far does that relationship go? What happens besides showing up? What happens when you’re actually there?