Dear Wilshire Family,
This fall I had the opportunity to teach in the Preschool hall. What a joy it was to watch those sweet kiddos interact with one another. But what I loved most was watching them pray. In the middle of play, they knew exactly what it meant to pause and pray. After the Bible story, there was a short prayer, and each child bowed their head, fully aware of what we were doing.
Prayer.
You’ve heard me tell this story before, but I love it, so I’ll share it again.
Every Sunday growing up, the late Rev. Charles Henderson would step forward during the altar call and say, “It’s prayer time.” As soon as those words came through the dented microphone, a hush would fall over the sanctuary — or sometimes a wail of lament. He would continue:
“As a child, I’d be outside playing, sweaty and full of energy. I’d run into the house and see my momma down on her knees, talking to God — she was praying. In the middle of her prayer she’d call out, ‘Boy, come in here and pray!’ I’d yell back, ‘Nah, Momma, I don’t need to pray. I don’t need to talk to God.’ And Momma would yell back, ‘Boy, just keep living!’ Well, y’all know what? I kept on livin,’ and I realized I needed prayer.”
Almost every week, I walk the entire Wilshire campus and its surrounding perimeter, praying for you. Some weeks I call out individual names; other weeks I pray for the congregation as a whole. For nearly three years now, this has become a sacred weekly rhythm. Sometimes those prayers come with words, and sometimes they echo what Paul describes in Romans: “the Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”
You already know this — prayer works. And I don’t just mean in relation to meeting our budget, though that matters. I mean in all aspects of who we are as Christian people. As my favorite theologian, Abraham Heschel, reminds us, prayer is “the worship of the heart.”
Heschel writes: “Prayer is a way to master what is inferior in us, to discern the vital and the useless. Prayer clarifies our hopes and intentions. It helps us discover our true aspirations, the pangs we ignore, and the longings we forget. It gives us the opportunity to be honest, to say what we believe, and to stand for what we say.”
I am grateful to witness the many forms of prayer within our community. These prayers bind us together and strengthen us for the work God calls us to do in the world.
So, for this giving email, I have a simple request: Will you pray with me?
Pray in all the ways Heschel describes — so that together we may discover our true aspirations, the pangs we ignore and the longings we forget, both individually and as a community.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for the many ways you have contributed to the Unified Budget this year. Your generosity matters, and so do you.
I love you,
Tim