Prayer is communication with God in all its forms. This includes intimate as well as seemingly distant communication, from text messages to touch, from speech to silent connection. Prayer establishes the bridge between God and humanity. It is as vital to our well-being, both now and in whatever is to come, to develop a flourishing prayer life, as it is to communicate with human loved ones.
An analogy is helpful here. There are two sides or hemispheres to the human brain. What connects them, so that they can communicate with each other, and work together for that person to be a whole and healthy person, is a band of neural fibers called the “corpus callosum.” If this band is damaged or destroyed, that person will be at best only a partial self.
To extend the analogy: let the right hemisphere represent the embodied person, who seems to live and move and have their being in this physical universe. And let the left hemisphere represent the spiritual domain of heaven, consisting of persons, divine and human, who have spiritual rather than physical bodies. Instead of the three dimensions of the physical universe, namely height, depth and breadth, the spiritual universe consists of the “I, you and we” of persons. And instead of clock time, there is simple duration.
Here is the deal: we live in both hemispheres at the same time. Call the spiritual realm a “parallel universe.” The spiritual cosmos is as vast as the physical. We can glimpse the spiritual through spoken language, which posits all three dimensions of persons: Somebody says something to someone. There is the “I” of the speaker, the “you” of the one spoken to, and the “we” of the speech itself, their relationship. Call this the “Trinity” of persons, which includes both God and humanity, made in God’s image.
When you pray through this spiritual “corpus callosum” which secretly exists between you and God, you enter into this “Other Side,” which at the same time enters into you. You come from and belong to this spiritual hemisphere of persons, and when you cease to exist in the physical universe, you will find yourself in this, your true home. As Augustine prayed, “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee.”
Finally, it is important to note that in the current view of physics, the cosmos consists of 68% dark energy, 27% of dark matter and only 5% of physical, observable matter. Physical space is not empty; nor is spiritual space, even if, like the physical universe, it is mostly invisible – here anyway. In short, the space between you and God is not empty. The only way to discover this is through prayer. The state of your prayer life is the state of your relationship with God.
My purpose in the roughly three-minute prayers to come is to assist you to enter into a daily dialogue with God. That also means entering into the spiritual sphere of God, while consenting to God’s entrance into you. Trust that God can do amazing things in three minutes.
[A podcast version of this is available in the Podcast section of this website.]
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