Gate of Heaven

In a mysterious way we are the house of God. We are God's church as we become willing servants. And within this house of God, there is found the gate of heaven, a stairway of exchange. This is another name for prayer. If we have truly opened our hearts, God will be in this place and we may only know it in hindesight. As we stop thinking about ourselves, we become truly open to the world (God in creation), to revelation (God in words) and to redemption (God in history).

There is mystery to prayer. Sometimes we cry out from the depths of our souls, and something miraculous happens. We may realise it only in hindesight. Thus, there can be no clear-cut formula to prayer. It is interesting that the Hebrew verb 'to pray' has a reflexive stem added to the verb 'to achieve a settlement'. This reflexive addition can give the sense of doing the mediation personally and points to prayer as intercession. Prayer is to think of the reality outside of ourselves.

Prayer ought to be more an act of listening than of speaking. We must ask what our God of the universe wants of us. What will we discover when we listen in the silence of our souls? We are here because God wants us to be. God is calling us into a transformed life. Prayer changes us. We reach a new awareness as we journey beyond ourselves.

We cry out to God to make peace in our world. For our part, this peace must grow from the ground up. Let us plant seeds of peace and make an effort to understand the other, hearing the anxieties and resentments of people on the other side. And let us give to God our own anxieties and resentments because the burden is greater than our human hearts can bear.

As the house of God, we are privileged to have available the gate of heaven, and through it God calls us into service. We uphold God's creation, we share God's word, and we live out lives that lead to God's redemption of life. This is a place like no other.