Face to Face

The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend (Exodus 33:11).

Howard could barely get out of bed for class. I left the apartment most days wondering if my roommate would manage to roll out of bed to grab lunch. The excellent grades he maintained were, in my mind, a feat worthy of Houdini. I don’t know how he did it. Few people loved sleeping in more than Howard.

Until deer season started. On opening day of the season, Howard would be up and gone by 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. I doubt he needed an alarm clock to do this. There was something about deer hunting that literally woke Howard up. This endeavor summoned forth life and energy. Simply put, he loved it.

I have a book on prayer, the introduction to which was written by Daniel Taylor, professor of English at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Taylor pens a sentence that captures what prayer ought to be like; it gives us something to aim for even if it is an elusive target. Taylor states:

I can admire a person who gets up early in the morning hours because prayer is important, but I hardly know what to make of a man who gets out of bed in the dark because the act of prayer is so pleasurable. (Ben Patterson, Deepening Your Conversation with God, p. 8)

What would it be like to pray that way? What would it be like to get up every morning and begin the day with prayer simply because we love it? What would it be like to pray because prayer is pleasurable; to set aside the day’s beginning for God not out of obligation, but out of sheer delight? I’d love to have that kind of prayer life. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m not there yet.

My ritual of daily prayer begins with an act of resistance. The clock rudely interrupts whatever is happening deep in my sleeping brain. I want to get back to that cozy blurry place. Just 6 more minutes. With only a slight stretch my fingers find the snooze button. The clock and God patiently stand by and accommodate my sloth. When time’s up, the clock starts chattering again. Sometimes the negotiating continues, but on good days I’ll lay off the snooze after two rounds and make my way downstairs for coffee. For me a good morning begins with the night before. Prayer comes so much easier when the coffee maker has been set to auto-drip and that hot cup of grace is ready, no waiting.

I often wonder what it would take to transform prayer from performance of a discipline to the pursuit of a pleasure. To watch Moses at prayer, there’s something going on there that would cause anyone to bolt upright well before sun-up, no clock needed: Moses was meeting with God, face to face, like a man talks to a friend.

When prayer is something we do for God we’ll go as many rounds as we can with the snooze button. But if we know that we’re meeting with God in leisurely and direct conversation, that reality changes everything. Don’t move to the next email too quickly. Keep this one open a while longer. God wants conversation with you.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus, your disciples asked you to teach them to pray. But we need more than that. Teach us to love to pray. We give you thanks for your patient presence, your unhurried willingness to hear us. Transform our daily discipline into a deep delight, and begin that transformation now. Amen.