- How to praise when we just feel like being alone?
- How to be the people of God when we don’t feel like being around other people?
- How to go to church when we just want to go for a long walk by ourselves?
- How to open up when we just want to shut down?
What is it about being together when we worship or praise that is significant? Christians, Jews, Muslims all gather together for prayer and praise.
It is often said you cannot be a lone Christian, yet the hermit has a special place in church history. The desert fathers lie firmly in our spiritual history. Why?
No man is an island: yet we all are. We have to establish our bridges and boats, to communicate ourselves to others, and to let them into our lives. No one truly knows us, and we are fearful of letting others see the person we perceive ourselves to be.
Yet God knows us thoroughly, better than we know ourselves – a great part of spiritual growth lies in coming to know and understand ourselves, and this can be a hard journey. Often, I think, we scarcely know ourselves. We are shaped so thoroughly by our early experiences that we can fail to recognise their influence, even to the point of not really understanding what we are now, let alone starting to comprehend how we came to be like that.
When we pray aloud, it is not because God needs to hear what we pray – he already knows what is on our hearts. It is because of what speaking something out loud does in us, and what it means to those who hear. We are making bridges, launching boats. We are telling each other what lies on our hearts.
But what is it that happens within us when we pray (or praise) aloud? What happens when we take inchoate thought or desire, and mould it into words, and speak them out? Something changes. What is it?
Singing in a choir, or playing in an orchestra is somehow significantly different from playing or singing by ourselves. Why? How?
