Tuesday Prayer: 41

This is my 41st 'Tuesday Prayer' post. I've been reading an elderly book, by Joyce Hugett, called Listening to God, which draws on her experience, scripture, and the challenge of listening to God. It also, at least at the start which is where I've recently departed, talks about her and her husband's ministry in Nottingham. As a spiritual son of Nottingham (See this post) I was gripped. But it was something else that struck me, a challenge regarding how we pray and meet with God;

“The monk befriended my husband and me that day and planted a suggestion in our minds,

'Why don't you come here and make a retreat on your own one day?' The very phraseology, 'make a retreat', sounded suspiciously Catholic to our Protestant ears, but something about this prayer sanctuary had hooked us. Early in December, we arrived to make our first retreat.

I shall never forget that first sip of real stillness. The retreat demanded nothing of us except simply to be in the presence of God...”

Joyce's words go on. She described the saturated rhythms of the monastery - and the effect that it had on her. But I was struck by two things as I read this slim passage in her book, yellowed-and-dated though its pages were.

Firstly, this notion of 'retreat'. We associate - in this time of war and this remembering-of-ward - 'retreat' with something negative. A cringing back from action. The kind of thing those 'non-missional' Christians do. And yet. We read that Jesus retreated to pray. And sometimes a retreat presages a mighty forward motion. What if God were challenging us to see prayer as our retreat that the kingdom might advance?

The second is something deeper. This radical notion of closeted lives, liturgical organisation, and sacred space. Words that get low-church, non-conformist, charismatic evangelicals like me worrying about the rise of religion.

And yet.

I wonder whether there is something to this radical, celibate community thing. To the ancient ways of liturgical organisation. To recognising the silent witness of spaces where saints have gathered for years, their prayers, praises and proclamations echoing around ancient stones.

I wonder whether prayer is meant to be a retreat. Backing up to rest in God's presence before going forward. I wonder whether we who so love the church without the trappings need to consider that the bells and whistles might have something good in them.

Well, at least thats what this quote got me thinking.

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I'd love to hear what you think of this snippet of Joyce Hugget. Let me know in the comments!

Don't forget to check out the previous posts in the series, featuring quotes from Tom Wright, John Wimber, Richard Foster and Don Carson, the great J. C. Ryle and theologians Alister McGrath and James K. A. Smith. Since then, I've shared quotes from Justin Welby, E.M. Bounds, Vineyard Pastor Ken Wilson, C. S. Lewis,  Norwegian O'Hallesby, Paul Miller, John Piper. Recently, we've heard Matthew Henry, Charles Finney, Andrew Murray, Tim Chester, Vaughan Roberts, Oliver O'Donovan, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and John Bunyan. Then we got rather retro, with quotes from Church Fathers John Chrysostom and Tertullian, before returning to more recent thinkers with Rowan Williams, Mike Reeves and Peter Jackson and Chris Wright and Andrew Case, R. C. Sproul, and (representing a slight change of tack) the Westminster Confession. Recently we considered Karl Barth, and Donald Macleod, Mary Prokes,  J. C. Ryle (again!), Andrew Murray,  Martyn Lloyd Jones, Hudson Taylor, recently about Ffald-y-Brenin,  some of my own words, and most recently my friend Nick Parish.