Below are a number of thoughts and reactions.
The following is an except from our email prayer line just a few hours after:
All spiritual writers, from the desert fathers to Teresa of Avila, Evelyn Underhill, Henri Nouwen, and Thomas Merton have all stressed the importance of prayer in our lives. Theophan the Recluse expresses this forcefully when he says: “Prayer is the test of everything; prayer is also the source of everything; prayer is the driving force of everything; prayer is also the director of everything. If prayer is right, everything is right. For Prayer will not allow anything to go wrong.”
Don
This was written by Don L. For years he has been the lead Prayer Warrior of our church. After every service he is up front and people seek him out for prayer. Several times per year he leads Oakdale Church in a week of prayer where we have people in the church praying 24 hours everyday for a whole week. His whole life is an expression of prayer. I can see it in his eyes. I have learned a lot from him by just watching him live prayer.
The spiritual writers he is referring to are deeply spiritual people of prayer that have taught us for many centuries on a deeper life in the spirit than any books I\’ve seen today. Two of them were born in the 1800s, two in the 1900s, and one in the 1500s.
His email response came in the face of a tragedy that has left many of us in tears for the past 24 hours. Many people are hurting. I just stopped by and sat on the street where it happened. The telephone pole has become a memorial. Someone strapped a teddy bear to a pole. There were planters sitting along the curb. There were 15 or 20 balloons saying “I love you” tied to the pole. There were signs saying “I’ll never forget you”. “We’ll always remember you.” Someone stapled a couple poster boards to the telephone pole and they were full of writing . . . hundreds of words and signatures . . .. School age kids were sitting on that corner (25 hours later) talking quietly . . . shaking their heads . . . giving respect . . . hanging onto a bit of his presence.
I cried as I pulled away. In both directions, people were outside on the sidewalks and porches, looking toward “the corner”. While in those two blocks, I felt as though I had stepped out of the rat race and into an ethereal realm. I continued to cry all the way home.
He was a GRPS Creston High School student. My kids are GRPS students. He is 16, my son is 14. I practiced on Wednesday with a worship team and we are singing on Sunday. One of the members of the worship team is a Creston High School student. I live less than a mile away from the crime scene. The place where David last experienced this life and interacted with his friends. People from church know him and his family. Along with the tears, it makes me sooo angry.
In the face of this comes this email from Don. The quote was powerful and deeply encouraged me to enter into prayer and stay there, praying unceasingly, the way we are supposed to pray at all times.
The prayer that Prayer Warrior Don and the spiritual writers refer to has very little to do with the prayer I learned about as a child. It is only recently through these writers that I’ve gotten a glimpse of it. I’m learning to live a life of prayer, but still only in glimpses. I do love it that Don lives prayer before us, though. It is by example that we learn.
This is prayer that is the foundation for our relationship to God.
Just like any relationship requires communication and connection, so it is with our relationship with God. Prayer is that connection and communion.
This is prayer that is not so much something we do as it is how we approach life.
This is prayer that should undergird everything we do, think, say…
This is prayer that is lived unceasingly before God.
This is prayer that, at its essence, is silent, without words before an awesome, mysterious God.
This is prayer that is first walked, not talked.
This is prayer that when there are no words to communicate, the Spirit utters our most primal and dark feelings to God.
This is prayer that has nothing to do with what I want, but everything to do with what God wants of me.
This is prayer that when we have no where to turn, when the pain is too great, when life makes no sense, when we are so angry at injustice, we grab God by the lapels and shake and shake and shake Him until He gives us an answer or gives us peace or we just fall to the ground.
This is the prayer of the saints of the Bible.
This is the prayer that has less to do with what God’s will is and everything to do with becoming God’s will.
This is the prayer that cries out to God from the depths of our being:
“Look at this tragedy! Look at it! Why! Why? Feel these peoples’ pain. Come alongside them and cry with them . . . for as long as it takes . . . until they are comforted by You. Make me Your heart and hands. Put their pain and suffering in my heart so I can feel it and then become comfort to them also. Then work your miracle of turning the deepest tragedies and evils of humankind into good.”
This is the prayer that Don is talking about.
This is the prayer I’ve been struggling to understand and wrote a blog about it five months ago.
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Friends remember murdered teen
Posted: Sep 27, 2008 07:54 PM
Updated: Sep 27, 2008 07:54 PM
by Marc Thompson
EAST GRAND RAPIDS, Mich (WOODTV8) – While the action was on the field Saturday morning, the focus of Creston High School students and staff was far from it.
16-year-old David Witherspoon was shot and killed on Grand Rapids southeast side less than 24 hours before the kick off, leaving fellow classmates…
“Depressed. It’s a sad moment. He was close to one of my friends,” said student, Breyonna
Broyles
It was before 4 p.m. Friday when police say Witherspoon was walking with a group of friends on Kalamazoo Avenue near Griggs Street when two men in a white Neon drove by and fired shots.
Witherspoon died at the scene.
The Creston family is left to try and cope with the loss.
“It’s kind of a shock when you know somebody one day and the next day they’re gone so it’s hard,” said parent, Kathy Smith.
Grand Rapids Public schools providing extra security at the game to ease the minds of fans.
GRPS athletic director Kurt Johnson says rescheduling the game was the right thing to do as Witherspoon was close with many of the football players.
“I spoke with the athletes and told them that part of the lessons in athletics is about passing the ball and running up and down the field, but some of the lessons they’re learning from their coaches is about being there for one another, operating as a family being supportive of one another and learning to lean on each other in tough times and tough times are being tested now,” said Johnson.
Meanwhile back at the scene, friends of David or “Day Day” as he was known, sign a memorial in disbelief as they remember.
“I knew him for five years… this is crazy”
“Out of everybody you got to pick Day Day. That’s like you killing an angel.”
Posted on September 27, 2008
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