One of my regular readers sent an email asking whether parrots ever pray. And the answer is yes we do. In fact, it’s easy for us. I just open up a wing and stick my head underneath, and I’ve got a place of peace and quiet in which to communication with God.
My owner, on the other hand, does things a bit differently. He can’t contort enough to get his head under his armpit, and even if he could, he’s not very conventional in the way that he prays. Unlike many humans, he doesn’t set aside a specific time in the day to pray to God. But what he does do is have ‘quiet chats’ with God at different moments in the day. And by ‘chats,’ I mean that he’ll pray about things which are on his mind, and at the same time, unexpected thoughts can literally ‘pop’ into his head, which he knows have been put there for a purpose. This may all sound great, except that some of these thoughts nag him to do something that he really doesn’t want to do, or else to do things that he feels incapable of doing. Poor chap! As we parrots like to say, ‘he is only a human, after all!’
So, there are occasions when my owner has to make a difficult choice. He can stay hidden in his bunker and pretend that he never got God’s message in the first place, or else he can try to do what God has asked but stir up a hornet’s nest in the process. And that’s exactly what has happened over the last few months as he’s tried to dissuade an illegal hunt from operating in and around our village. His head is now well up above the parapet, and folk are taking aim. And yet, very strangely, he’s able to deal with it in a way that he never thought he could, because he’s been given extra strength.
Unless we have regular two-way communication with God, we won’t always know what He wants us to do; we might not make a leap of faith to fulfil God’s will; and we will end up under-achieving during our lifetimes. No, whenever God genuinely wants us to do something, He will make it known and help us along the way. But it all comes down to that, regular, open, two-way communication. My owner’s not there yet; the fight goes on, but his trust in God has never been stronger, and he’s in the process of learning one of life’s most important lessons. And it’s all come about through prayer…..
“To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.”
(Martin Luther: [1483 – 1546]: German priest and theologian who was a key figure in the Protestant Reformation.)
“Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tyre?”
(Corrie ten Boon: [1892 – 1983]: Dutch Christian author and speaker, who survived internment in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp.)
“Prayer is not getting man’s will done in Heaven, but getting God’s will done on Earth.”
(Richard C. Trench: [1807 – 1886]: Irish Anglican Bishop and poet)
“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”
Comentarios