Prayer

Legendary jazz great Duke Ellington shared a story from the medieval church that was the basis for one of his songs. There was a man who approached the priest of a local parish and asked what he could do to give an offering to God when he had no money. The priest suggested he use his talents as an offering to God. The man told the priest that he only had one talent and that he did not see how he could use it to honor God. The man was a juggler for a traveling group of entertainers. The priest then suggested that he come to church on Sunday and juggle during mass as an offering for God…so he did. This story inspired Duke Ellington so much that he decided to write religious songs in the style of music he knew best, jazz. And that is how the song, “Everyman Prays in His Own Language” came about.

When asked about whether he thought that the idiom of jazz music was appropriate for religious music, Duke replied, “Everyone prays in his own language.” So Duke kept writing sacred music, and by the time he was finished he had written enough music to perform three separate sacred concerts. His famous band performed these all over Europe and America where they attracted crowds that might never have entered a church otherwise.

James tells us that, “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (James 5:16b)

When I was young, the prayers that I heard in church were often intoned with a King James-style of speaking. “Thou, Lord, art great, and Thy mercy dwelleth amongst us.” I guess people thought that it was more “holy” to speak to God in a language that had been dead for hundreds of years. I am just glad that they did not feel it necessary to pray in Latin or Hebrew. As a kid, it also seemed that they would go on and on for what seemed like twenty minutes or more, praying about everything and everybody. And, of course, you had to keep saying, “Lord” or “God” or “Father” over and over. I thought people kept forgetting who they were talking to or that they thought God may not remember they were talking to Him.

You see, as a kid my prayers were very simple. “God bless Mommy.” “God bless Daddy.” “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake.”  So THAT was how our parents kept us in bed at night. “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for this food.” It always bothered me that good and food did not rhyme, so I usually would say “goud” whenever I said that prayer. I remember once trying to pray like one of the adults. I threw in a bunch of “these” and “thous” and said “Lord” every other word. But that was not prayer for me.

So what is prayer? Simply stated, prayer is communication with God. Too often that communication is one-sided. We present to God our requests, we may even slip in an obligatory thank you, and then we go about our business. Granted, there are forms of communication that are one-sided. For instance, you cannot talk back to your television. Well, actually you can, and often people do during political speeches or sporting events, but it really does no good. The person on the other end of the television is not going to respond to you anymore than the driver in front of me will respond when I sit inside my car and complain that he is driving too slow.

God simply desires to hear from us and to speak to us. When somebody asks how they should pray, I often fall back on the old acrostic “ACTS”: adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication. Tell God what He means to you, confess your sins, thank Him for what He has done, and then ask Him for help in certain areas. But how you talk to Him is not as important as it is THAT you talk to Him.

When I heard the story behind Duke Ellington’s song on prayer, I wrote a hymn about prayer and set it to the tune of “Sweet Hour of Prayer” which I have shared before. You can read it HERE.