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Morning Reflection
May 5, 2026
Some reverent comments on prayer.
The Christian life is not a “system,” but is rather a set of dialectical tensions with which the individual must grapple.”
Reflection by Peter Vanderveen
One of the more awkward habits in church life stems from the assumption that meetings – of almost any kind – ought to begin or end with prayer. Preferably a short one. Almost always in these moments all eyes turn to see if there is an ordained person in the room. Clergy are the recognized professionals in offering prayers. And usually this lets everyone else off the hook. If, perchance, a call is made for someone else to pray, it is telling how quickly all eyes turn downward. Everyone shares the same hope that he or she won’t be tapped. Why?
Most of the time, the answer given is that individuals don’t like to be put on the spot publicly. I understand this. And this reticence can be all the more accentuated when the request is for something as intimate or as rare as addressing God. This isn’t a shared and routine practice.
True. But I’ve also come to the point of thinking that the real problem is the prayer itself. And I’ve done these prayers countless times. And almost invariably I’ve wondered thereafter what the real purpose was. In many cases, an initial prayer serves, primarily, simply as an indication that a meeting is being called to order, and nothing more than that. I can count on less than two hands the number of times, across a span of decades, that someone has invoked the words of the prayer later in the business of the meeting in the attempt to refocus a discussion.
Once offered, a prayer is done. People move on. And for good reason. Because so many of the prayers that are offered are no more than platitudes. They announce what is already taken for granted. They are pro forma declarations of what, at some level, we all agree are guiding principles or best practices. They are reminders of things for which we don’t need much reminding. When was the last time something was said in such a prayer that changed your entire mode of perception and conduct? When has a prayer before a meeting haunted you in such a way that you can’t shake it off for days?
At root, these prayers are ritual moments that we, rather shallowly, utilize for ourselves. God doesn’t have much play in the matter. This is the problem. None of us expect that the prayers will be the cause of a great revelation. We don’t wait for God to respond, maybe surprisingly. They are fashioned to our own ends – one might say in the “system” that is Christianity. Such prayers are generally intended to put things in their proper place. And, really, we don’t give much thought or credence to the possibility that God, having been called upon, might interrupt the proceedings.
Prayer should be a form of grappling – with God, not with ideas. It should be humbling, and entered into with the sense that it could be dangerous, threatening things we might wrongly cherish. This is what grappling entails; which is much more dynamic than solidifying a consensus that doesn’t much matter anyway.
At a recent meeting, I was asked to open it with prayer. I chose to offer different words. And maybe no one else noticed. But they relieved me of a certain dead weight that comes with the usual invocations. Instead of praying, I addressed those in the room with this invitation: “May all of our work – our thoughts, our words, our deliberations, and our decisions – be as a prayer, by which we set ourselves before God.”
This, it seems to me, is the great task of every day.
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