Desperation, Connection and Prayer

There we were in the Houston Astrodome. There were thousands of us. After all the months of planning and preparing for the 2018 ELCA Youth Gathering we were now at the closing worship getting ready to get back on the bus for a 18 hour ride back home. It was amazing and breath taking. I was filled with overwhelming gratitude. We had joined together with three other churches to form a group of 30 youth plus adults for a milestone adventure. The planning and logistics were a lot. At this last worship service the instructions for everyone to be served communion had us forming lines along the stadium seats and going to various stations spread thought the stadium.

At that time I couldn’t eat wheat without breaking out in a rash. The instructions on where to go to get a gluten free wafer had escaped me. I took the piece of bread offered not sure what I would do with it. After my sip from the cup I followed my friend and colleague Pastor Libby back to our seats still holding the bread. “Would you eat this for me?” I asked. 

I didn’t want to drop this gift of the body of Christ. I certainly wasn’t going to throw it away. It felt so intimate and vulnerable to ask this of her. In that moment I had an epiphany; so many times this is exactly what we are doing for one another - we are taking in God’s gifts. It’s what it can feel like for me when I ask someone to prayer for me or they ask me to pray for them. On this morning as my eyes welled with tears at this intimate moment, I was reminded of all the times I have served a wafer or lifted a little cup to the lips of someone very ill or even close to death. At times it was too much for them to swallow even a little taste of a wafer dipped in the wine yet there they were with their mouth wide open. I would simply touch this littlest of tastes to their lips and let the smallest piece of a wafer dipped in wine dissolve. Or sometimes I would ask another family member who was there to take and it eat for them.  I don’t really know if this practice is completely theologically sound yet it speaks to my heart of Jesus. Whose very body we take in - in the wafer and the wine. A love so deep, so enfleshed, so earthly. These often desperate moments become so intimate and we are deeply connected. 

I don’t remember if Pastor Libby and I spoke about that moment much at the time. I know I have told others of that story and my remembering of it. Her memory of it might be different. What I do remember is feeling that we were “in communion” with those thousands of people gathered and with Jesus present in bread and wine. And we were connected at a different level. 

As I have been reflecting on Jesus telling a parable to remind us to pray always and not lose heart this story came to mind. It was an answer to my prayer of “God what should I do with this bread?”. To be in continual, conscious conversation with God is the sort of prayer that Jesus speaks of; a deep trust God is indeed with us and we listen as we pray. We direct our hopes and our fears, admit our failings and frailties to God in prayer. It changes me to have this connection and often it is in the desperate moments that I am awakened to the reality that there is no place God is not present. Nowhere. 

As I write these words tonight they are a prayer of sorts… as I am checking in asking for God’s guidance on what words to share with God’s beloved. Today when we stood along Colorado Blvd with our signs of what people of faith are for I was reminded of how often the action is changing the one acting just as prayer changes the one praying.