Kindergarten Prayer

                By far, my favorite quote from The Phenomenology of Prayer, is on page 19, "Second, we learn how prayer is the task of a lifetime, so that even those who have been praying all of their lives may not have gotten much farther than kindergarten." I believe this says a lot about combining everything from our class discussions to religious connections and affiliations. He goes on to explain that acting upon your prayers truly presents yourself to God as a listener. This really hits home for me as a follower of Christ. I feel it should make phenomenal sense even if you are not a Christ follower. However, if you are, it hits home hard and well, because this is what you aim for. Any Christ follower does just that; follows Christ and His teachings. This means you must embrace all He has to offer and then turn your own life upon that. Then when all else fails, you must turn back to Him and ask how He can help. What this quote says to me is that once you have reached a full potential point with prayer, does God see you as truly able to understand what He is and does for you. To back up and touch upon the first quote about kindergarten, this goes to really connecting and acting with what you have got to work with. Prayer lays it all out there for you; you just have to go in and take it (the acting)! If you go your entire life just winding through the motions of the basic knowledge you have of prayer and thank God for life and then ask for help on a big test or job interview, then you are communicating with kindergarten prayer. You are just skimming by on the surface of what prayer has to offer to you. If you truly dig in and offer up to the prayers you are giving (instead of just offering prayer to the air) then you will feel more joy and completion in the act you are partaking in and possibly even be spoken to in order to further at upon your prayer. This is the level of commitment and determination and worth it takes to be able to grow and form your prayer. Again, along with this concept of kindergarten prayer, it is a bit of a rude inflection upon whatever or whomever your prayers are lifted to by just skimming the surface. You are then telling that person or being that you think this is how much they deserve to be listened to. Like Benson states further down page 19, "...we only kid ourselves...if we think we have finished learning how to listen to God as He deserves to be listened to." Pardon the analogy, but of my knowledge, this feels to me like if you pump yourself up for a very big test that you have studied for maybe an hour and felt you knew everything so you simply stopped. Then, once you get to the actual exam, you realize you forget to look over the back page of the study guide. As you venture further into the test, you feel as though you never even studied at all, because you feel so fragile and weak as though you were not as prepared as you thought. God is not a hard test and Prayer is not a study guide. It is a lifestyle that some take to, some do not, and others pretend to. You may not realize you are pretending, so next time you prayer, really listen to yourself as God listens to you.