HOUSE OF PRAYER

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1 Maccabees 7:37

Even though this passage is taken out of context, this portion speaks to my heart:

“You chose this house to be called by Your name,
and to be for Your people a house
of prayer and supplication.”

The writer was speaking of the Temple in Jerusalem, but applies equally today to all houses of worship, and I believe, to our own houses as well.
My question for myself this morning is: “Is my house a house of prayer?”

I confess that I don’t pray as often as I should. I tend to shoot up what I call “arrow prayers” throughout the day.  “Thank you, Lord, for this…Please, Lord…Lord, what will I do about such-and-such…Lead me, Lord…” You get the picture. But to sit down quietly before the Lord? Not easy. I find I kind of “dry up” when I sit down with the actual intention of praying.  But, I pray before I open the Bible to whatever passage the Lord calls me to before I write these little ponderings of mine. And I shoot arrow prayers up many times a day.  So, does that count as prayer?

Okay, here’s what occurs to me. God is not talking necessarily talking about a physical building here. If our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, is my body a “house of prayer?” Do I carry my “house of prayer” around with me, wherever I go? To work, to school, in the car, walking the dogs, grocery shopping, to Weight Watcher meetings? Am I carrying my house of prayer with me, or is my house of prayer carrying me? It seems like a fine line, because I’m not sure we can separate the two…and why would we even want to?

If we ARE a house of prayer, “we” as in our very own selves, not a building we go to once a week, then how do we treat this house of prayer? In the book of 1 Maccabees we hear how the Syrian ruler plundered the temple, burned the books of the Old Testament, forbade circumcision and sacrificed a pig on the altar of the temple. What sort of desecrations do we do to our personal houses of prayer every day? Are we putting toxic chemicals or alcohol into it? Are we not treating it with the respect it deserves? Are we letting our temple get fat and lazy?

Looking at our bodies as temples of the Living God, as Houses of Prayer that are with us every second of our earthly lives….well, it puts kind of a different spin on just how we treat God’s house.

How do YOU treat your House of Prayer?