Prayer and Formality

Devotional Classics, George Buttrick, Excerpts from Prayer

"Prayer is friendship with God. Friendship is not formal, but it is not formless: it has its cultivation, its behavior, its obligations, even its disciplines; and the casual mind kills it." (p.100)

What a peace of mind this gives me! I have struggled with my desire for form in my friendship with God. I do not consider myself to be formal in my approach usually. I have trouble coming to God with lists, reading the Bible on a schedule, journaling everyday, etc. And yet, I find if I let this informality run wild, my time with God slips away from me.

So I have adopted some forms of devotion. Some of them are created by others for use in a group, but I find them helpful on an individual basis. Most of the forms I have are home-made, pieces from here and there that are useful. The forms are helpful to a point. When does form interfere?

What happens to me is that I get excited about a particular form and practice it incessantly for a while, even to the exclusion of other things that have long upheld my friendship with God. Sometimes it's conscious. I think, "I've found it! The one thing that will keep me close to God! I don't need anything else." More often my fascination with a particular practice elbows the others out of the way for a while. Novelty has its own draw. Form seems to interfere when I become more focused on the form than the relationship.

That being said, I do not find it is altogether detrimental to change pace, drop some things for a bit, or try something new. However, when I think of it in terms of friendship, I realize that my fascination with novelty or change often has more to do with my own desires than the good of my friendship. Rather than develop my friendship with God, I easily wander off to side-attractions in the circus of life.

The "casual mind," as Buttrick calls it, is the tendency to wander away from the hard work of friendship into whatever I want to do at the moment. It is not openness or freedom, but neglect. For instance, I struggle with wandering into various modes of Bible study and neglect my regular prayer. Here I need discipline; I need to keep prayer at the top of my priorities in relating with God.

Lord, you know that I take you for granted often. I get engrossed in some new method of study or even a method of prayer and I forget how to just stay at your side in ways we've discovered together. Save me from being too rigid! But more so, Lord, save me from being too casual with our friendship. Amen.

At my job, I will get a project that I really like and then neglect all my other work to focus on that project. My work goes much better if I place things in the order of importance rather than in the order of what I feel like at the moment. This seems to apply to my spiritual life as well. There are things that are important that are not always desirable at first. Also, rather than neglect what I need - like prayer - I can neglect other things that are not as necessary. A very casual friendship is usually a self-centered one.