There are more people who talk about desiring to join a gym than those numbers of people who actually join a gym.
Prayer is the gym membership of the Church.
There are more people who talk about prayer than people who actually pray. This is true among the clergy ranks as well. I have been at many small meetings with clergy and there is no prayer at all. Not even a "God is great" prayer.
Could it be that perhaps all the talk and little action to the practice of prayer is that we do not really think it matters or makes a difference?
We tend to think that we are all individual people living individual lives and our actions are too small to affect anyone on any sort of scale. We also tend to think that unless we can physically see something then that something is not real. Or, put another way, we are really suspicious of all that “spiritual” stuff.
Prayer has fallen out of popular practice in part because we have bought into the idea that the only things that change the world are the grand projects. And while these grand ideas are needed, we forget that each grand projects is just a collection of much smaller projects. The beehive is very large, but it is the result of a bunch of small bees doing small amounts. Big things are the result of small things.
Secondly, we hesitate to take prayer too seriously because we cannot see prayer. We can see the sandwiches we made to go to the homeless. We can see the money we collect that goes to eradicate Malaria. We can see the hours we put into a home and see the improvements, but we cannot see prayer. And since we cannot see it, it somehow is less than that which we can see.
So for many prayer becomes something we do not practice at the levels that we talk about it.
Which is where Jello, eggs and restaurants come into the picture. This post will just focus on Jello.
Imagine a mound of jello with fruit and you have a fork. You are tasked to remove a piece of fruit without disrupting the jello mold.
You may be able to have no movement if you move slowly. But as soon as you pierce the fruit to pull the fruit out, and the fruit pushes jello out of its way to make room for it’s exit, you will disrupt the mold.
Quantum Physics says that everything is bound together by energy. And that what affects one particle affects the next. Christianity has stated for hundreds of years that we are all bound together as the body of Christ. And what affects your ankle, affects your knee, and what affects your knee, affects your hip, your hips affect your back and your back affects your shoulders. What affects one area of the body affects all areas of the body.
Prayer is like a fork on a jello mold. It is said that prayer is really more helpful for the individual praying than anyone else. I don’t know. What I do know is what affects one part of the body affects all parts of the body. And quantum physics shows that affects one particle affects all particles.
The next post - Prayer and eggs.