Alone with God

“O God ... your loving-kindness is better than life itself”-Psalm 63:3

Essay by The Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner
July 1, 2010

Someone once asked me to visit a woman he knew, who lived alone in her house. So I went to talk to her. “I wish I were dead,” she told me. “I’m just miserable.” “I’ve nothing to do, no place to go. What’s the point?”

“Do you pray?” I asked her.

“I’ve prayed to get out of this place for ages; and God simply doesn’t listen.”

“Do you pray, not for things, but just to be with God?”

“What in the world do you mean be with God?” she asked.

“You know,” I said, “be with God out of love?” the rest-Excellent!

image by Peter Heilmann

Be with God, out of love … Do we know ourselves to be people who are living with God, fundamentally and really, always and everywhere, so that in fact we are never alone? Prayer inhabits the knowledge that “your loving-kindness is better than life itself,” so that “my soul is content, as with marrow and fatness” (Psalm 63:5). These words speak of eating, of sustenance — of life itself. The Church has always taught that prayer lies at the center of human life itself, and of the Christian vocation in particular. I have failed too often, as a teacher of teenagers and confirmands and new members, by neglecting this reality in favor of teaching about “doctrines” and “ministries” and the rest. But prayer! The prayer that constitutes “being with” the Life of our life, with God, as our marrow and fatness. Speaking to him, face to face — that is necessity.