The Tour de France composes a picture of beauty, flowing like a colorful river over the landscape, among the fields of sunflowers, through medieval towns, and majestically tackling the mountains.
For so many years, I was totally unaware of what was actually going on. I saw a mass of cyclists battling it out in scenic France every hot July, covering 2200 miles in 23 days. And it appeared to my eyes the ultimate competition for individual cyclists.
But the actuality is that the Tour is not every man for himself, but for each other. There are 22 teams of eight riders each, strategically positioned, trained and equipped to support each other, to extend help to designated team members, to give up one’s water bottle, to take pulls on the long steep climbs, and to sacrifice for another’s glory…and sometimes more than that.
As a team, they don’t just wear matching jerseys. But each is in his place and desire to get one’s teammate across the flatlands, up those impossible slopes, and to the finish line in Paris.
The cyclists on the Tour have trained together to ride in community and to build their strengths from within. The peloton is the main field or concentrated group of cyclists in the race, those who are, as one description pointed out, are “bunched together.” No better description of fellowship.
If you are going to survive at all in that race, you can’t go it alone.
God never intended for us to go it alone either. Self-sufficiency is the ultimate defeat.
Prayer is how we love God. But it is also how we love each other. Prayer stitches us together and connects us on ever deepening levels.
…for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. 2 Corinthians 1. 11
As we pray together, there is no distinction between what is your need and what is mine. We struggle together. We rejoice together. We weep together. We pray for each other. We hand each other a needed water bottle of encouragement. We take a pull on a long steep ascent that is not even our own. We stop, pull out the bandages and extend a hand to get each other back on the bike.
Even yesterday in watching the livestream of the Tour, I heard one of the announcers proclaim, “Cooperation in a big group bears fruit.”
Because we pray for each other, profound connections are being woven between each of us and with God, extending far beyond the specific need or a request on the table.
Prayer does not set anything into motion, nor awaken God, but makes us aware of God’s hand already redeeming the past, the now, and the next curve on our path. God goes with us. He goes before us.
Prayer is the fuel of relationships. Praying together is the vital link in order that we don’t miss His wonder among us.
Praying together sets up Ebenezer stones like flags along our route. Remember when we prayed about that? Remember how God responded? Remember how God redeemed? Remember how even as we prayed, God revealed His help in amazing ways?
Prayer magnifies His Name over anything we can do ourselves. Something supernatural happens through prayer. But then again, that’s the only way God works.
Prayer doesn’t just connect us to God, but to each other, even to people we do not know, yet. Someday on the other side, we will somehow recognize someone and know we prayed for them. Or they prayed for us.
And the people of Israel said to Samuel, “Do not cease to cry out to the LORD our God for us, that He may save us from the hand of the Philistines.” 1 Samuel 7.8
There are many people on my prayer list who have no idea I am praying for them.
Inviting others to join us in praying allows a growing multitude to share in how God unfolds our situations, how God provides strength in impossible places, how we all struggle with something and yet God is even there. Praying with and for each other invites others to come and know Him more.
From within a community of pray-ers, a deeper level of conversation emerges, a deeper way of loving each other, deeper connections that build up the Body of Christ in immense ways. Praying is how we love each other in community. You are not a part of a prayer peloton. You are a member. A multitude of others will benefit from your prayers and the gifts and strengths you are given.
We know the difference in those who say “I’ll pray for you,” and those who actually do. There are those who hand me a water bottle in my time of drought, even before I know I need it.
Yes, indeed, we come before our Father in solitude and the quietness of our hearts. But also being engaged in a community of prayer. Pray for one another. Know that He is among us.
Lift up the chorus, cheer from the sidelines like the French, ride alongside the big boys, pray without ceasing. We are all in this peloton bunched together. Just as God intended.
For where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I among them. Matthew 18. 20
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