Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

Raise your eyes now, and look"
Gen. 13:14

Why do we usually pray with our eyes closed?

Years ago, when our oldest son was a toddler we were invited to have dinner with another young family. Their daughter was about three years old. Her father invited us to bow our heads and close our eyes as he said grace at the table. At the end of the table blessing the little girl pointed at our one-year-old son and announced self-righteously, "He didn't close his eyes!" Her father responded, "How do you know?"

I suppose we learned as children to close our eyes for prayer in order to minimize distractions. Sunday school teachers and grandparents invited us to pray by telling us, "Fold your hands together (in other words don't poke your sister during the prayer). Now close your eyes (in other words, keep your mind on what is being said)." But by the time we are adults we discover that there are many different ways to pray. When driving on the freeway, I find the other drivers prefer that I pray with my eyes open.

I admit that prayer with our eyes open can feel distracting even for adults. For instance, the Pharisee in Jesus' parable was so busy looking around while praying that his prayer devolved into a comparison of his righteousness with others' sinfulness. Soon he was no longer praying to God but bragging to himself. The poor tax collector, on the other hand, could not even bring himself to look up. His was a humble prayer of repentance. No comparisons with others, just pleading for mercy. The prayer of the tax collector remained genuine prayer.

Since prayerwalking involves praying with our eyes open and we know this can be distracting and sometimes feels weird, maybe it would be worthwhile to consider its value. Praying with our eyes open creates an opportunity to see prayer as more about listening and receiving from God than simply talking. Let's explore this form of prayer.

The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, "Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Rise up, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you."
- Genesis 13:14-17

David McCasland tells a story about driving down the street when a woman flagged him down. Her car was stalled at an intersection. The hood was up. He stopped his car and went over to help. "I can't get it started," she said, "but my husband says all you have to do is jiggle a wire on the battery and it will work." He leaned in to examine the situation and quickly discovered a loose wire to the battery. When he grabbed the wire it came completely off the battery terminal. "The wire needs to be tightened to the terminal," he explained. "I can fix it if you have a wrench." "No that's okay. My husband says to just jiggle the wire," she replied. "Why don't you just try that?" The man paused for a moment, wondering why her husband did not simply follow her around town and jiggle the wire whenever the car stopped. In frustration he explained, "Ma'am, if I jiggle the wire, you are going to need someone to jiggle it every time you shut off the engine. If you will give me two minutes and a wrench, I can solve your problem." Reluctantly, she fumbled under her seat and handed him a crescent wrench. He tightened the wire to the terminal and the engine started just fine.

Some years ago when I used this story, a member of the church told me later that it really stayed with him. He realized that most of his relationship with God involved asking the Lord to wiggle the wire just enough to keep him going. Let's face it‹we often use prayer to ask God to wiggle the wires of our lives. Prayer walking helps us move from this kind of prayer to the kind of prayer where we want to see God's transformational remedy. Prayerwalking, with our eyes open, helps us discover a different kind of prayer‹discerning prayer.

God taught Abram this kind of prayer. Why did God tell Abram to walk around the countryside, praying with his eyes open? God had already determined and promised that this land would belong to Abram's offspring, so why the need for Abram to explore it for himself? The Lord was teaching Abram a new form of prayer. We might call Abram the original prayer walker. God wanted Abram to see the land and his neighbors through the eyes of faith.

In chapter 13, as a result of his prayer walk with God, Abram chose a place to settle. By chapter 14 he had developed alliances with his neighbors. His relationship with God included keeping his eyes open for opportunities to bless his neighbors. Was that just the way God worked back in the days of Abraham, or could that happen today?

I recall a few years ago when a couple of congregation members asked if they could show me something they had discovered. We drove a couple miles south on Pomerado Road and turned into a neighborhood. When we got to the top of a hill we pulled over to the side of the road and they pointed to a flat undeveloped piece of the hill. They explained to me that a local synagogue wanted to purchase this piece of property, but was looking for another congregation to share in their endeavor by helping with the purchase price and then subdividing it for future use. Might our church be interested? To be honest I had no immediate vision of how we would use it. As first glance, it was just a piece of undeveloped land. In fact, I already knew that another church had considered the same piece of property and had rejected it.

Over the next several weeks I drove up to that hill a few times to just sit with my eyes open and pray. "Lord, do you want our church to turn this piece of land into a place of blessing for the community?" It took a while before I saw the potential that the Lord saw for that place. I remember the afternoon when I did my first prayer walk of the property. I walked across the land asking the Lord, "Do you want us to turn this into some kind of community center? Lord, what could we build so that those outside our church would see it as blessing them and want to come participate in the activities?"

One day as I was prayerwalking that property I noticed something I hadn't seen before. It was shortly after school was dismissed and I saw middle school and high school youth walking on the edge of the property. These are the kids that don't play an instrument in the band. They don't play on an athletic team. They go home. I saw them and began to wonder about their lives. How many of them have a parent to greet them at home. Do they go to a safe place to do homework and enjoy healthy activities? How many of them hang out in unhealthy environments and get into trouble? I recalled a statistic I had heard a few years before that more than 70% of high school students in our county have never been inside a church. Were these some of the youth who know nothing about God's love?

Eventually, praying with open eyes, God showed me what we could do with that property. With the eyes of faith I could see children playing on a ball field. I saw an activity center where seniors go enjoy daytime gatherings and youth could hang out after school. With the Holy Spirit's guidance I began to dream dreams and see visions.

I call this kind of praying with open eyes "discerning prayer." Praying with our eyes open in order to see the situation as God sees it‹both the needs and the resources. Father Francis MacNutt describes how important this kind of prayer is when we pray for healing. In his book, Healing, one chapter is titled "Discernment of the root of sickness."

He tells a story about a visiting preacher who was taken by the local pastor to meet a woman who was paralyzed and sitting in a wheelchair. The entire right side of her body was paralyzed. As the visiting preacher began to ask some questions, he learned that her paralysis had developed about three months after a terrible church argument. Mae, the woman in the wheelchair, had her feelings seriously hurt by another woman of the congregation. When Mae walked away from that church, she refused to have anything to do with any church.

The situation was not too difficult to diagnose. Her hurt and bitterness had forced her to create in her body a way to relieve her of any responsibility for returning to church or forgiving what happened. Her body had become a visible statement to the entire world that she was not about to have fellowship with Christians who hurt people as she had been hurt. Her right hand, with which she would normally shake hands and greet people, had been paralyzed tight against her chest for three years.

As the visiting preacher listened to her and loved her and prayed for her spiritual healing of the anger she held toward the other woman and the church, God began to do something dramatic. At the close of the prayer time, he reached out to shake hands with her. Almost before she realized what she was doing, she reached her right hand out to his. Within an hour she was out of the wheelchair and learning to walk again.

Of course this is one of those unusual stories of sudden, dramatic results. Few of us will see such results from a few hours of prayerwalking our neighborhoods this Lent. But as we make praying with our eyes open a regular habit, we learn to discern situations from God's perspective. Letting our hearts become aligned with the compassion of Jesus' heart transforms our priorities. We discover that discerning prayer is less about our needs and more about seeing others with the compassion of Jesus.

The youth at Shively Christian Church were in constant competition with the youth program at Shively Baptist. Their summer softball teams were noted for their fierce rivalry. One summer the youth pastor at Shively Christian challenged the youth of that church to find a way to bless others as Jesus would. They divided into groups and headed out to find a place of service. One group mowed a lawn and trimmed the trees for a senior citizen near the church. Another group went to visit seniors at a nursing home. Still others delivered treats to some shut-ins of the church. But one group from Shively Christian Church surprised everybody, including their youth pastor.

This group went to the pastor of their rival church, Shively Baptist. They explained their assignment and asked if the Baptist pastor could suggest someone who might appreciate their ministry. The pastor gave them the name and address of a Baptist widow. For two hours the group trimmed her hedges, mowed her lawn, and cleaned up around her place. As they were preparing to depart, she thanked them. "You kids at Shively Baptist are always coming to my rescue."

When the group returned to Shively Christian and told their story about how the Baptist widow mistook them for youth from their rival church, the youth pastor was horrified. "Shively Baptist!" he sneered. "I sure hope you set her straight and told her you were from Shively Christian Church." The kids shook their heads as they explained. "No, we didn't." Then they clarified, "We didn't think it mattered."

When we see people through the compassionate eyes of Jesus, we experience a shift in priorities. Our prayers become less wrapped up in our own needs and more concerned with how to bless others. While we are prayerwalking our neigh-borhoods, if someone gets us confused with another church, does it really matter?