"What's prayer like for you?" While my pastoral question comes from a place of care and curiosity, it often falls like a judgmental hammer. Its followed by several responses. An awkward, uncomfortable stumbling about or a dismissive brush to the side, "it's fine," are not uncommon. Occasionally it's met with disarming humor, "what prayer life?" or brutal honesty, "meh, it's pretty non-existent." The reality is I rarely meet a person satisfied with their prayer life. 

When we think about who we are, what it means to be human, we realize that all life is meant to be communion. We were made to live in intimacy and love with God and one another. We were made to live in Love. Because we live in a fractured state within a shattered world, so much around us pulls us away from communion towards disintegration. The distractions in us and around us drag us towards the non-being of isolation. We are caught in an undertow of sin.

The story of Israel’s liberation into divine relationship is our story in so many ways. As we enter Holy Week we are left with the reminder that divine deliverance is and was always about restoration into divine relationship. The emancipating God liberates us from the empire of the present evil age and into divine communion.