Lifting Things Up

Pre-covid, I began taking a light weight lifting class a couple of times a week at our YMCA.  I was reluctant to even try at first, indeed arriving early to the class to stake out a mat in the farthest back row.  I was intimidated by the weights I observed others lifting in time to the music.  My grace was that I realized no one was watching me.

I was skeptical, but I tried.  I kept coming back.

Session after session, I struggled to keep up with the pace and the movements choreographed to upbeat music, far beyond my own out-of-sync coordination.  Other members of the class continually added weights to their bars in the course of the hour.  I could barely lift what little I had. It appeared I was not doing anything productive at all.  But one elderly woman next to me just moved her arms without any weights at all.  She gave me hope.

One session as we were putting away our equipment, I had decided to quit.  This was not doing anything for me.  I was done. No more classes for me.  And as the group began streaming out of the room, the instructor called out loud to us: 

You are stronger now than when you came.

Her words replayed over and over in my head. They still do.  Those consistent exercises were not a waste after all.  We were building strength, even if we didn’t realize it, day by day, a little stronger.  We could not remain unchanged by it.

Nor can we remain the same when we pray.  We are conversing with the Almighty, seeking Him, asking Him to align our hearts with His.  The more we pray, the more we are changed by it.  God builds His strength in us. The experience even begins to change what we pray, how we pray, and when we pray. 

Do not despise these small beginnings, for the LORD rejoices to see the work begin.  Zechariah 4. 10

By praying, we begin approaching situations differently.  Did it even occur to us to pray about that before?  We see both joys and difficulties with a new heart.  We lift up others, a little more weight at a time. And find God does the heavy lifting. We come more freely before the Lord.  We are no longer bound by “getting answers,” or finding solutions, or seeing His hand.  We more quickly and deeply pray, because God is why we pray.  We pray right here in this appointed place, on this sacred ground, and in His sovereign territory.  And we go into our day, changed, catching perhaps a glimpse of what we haven’t before.  Not focused on “a reason” for this.  But His glory. 

You are stronger now than before you prayed.

Prayer can’t help but change us.  He is guiding us to Himself.

“The only way to pray is to pray, and the way to pray well is to pray much.”

                              --Dom John Chapman, as quoted by Henri Nouwen in The Road To Daybreak