Let us pray - for 3 minutes

I have to admit something. I have never been a huge prayer warrior. I don't wake up at 5 o'clock every morning to pray for 2 hours before each day starts. I know I should pray more often than I do though. But I have this problem with becoming okay with where I'm at. When nothing is going wrong, when I feel like I'm living how I want to be. Oh, boy that's the most dangerous state to get stuck in. And that's where I felt I was at. When I get into the routine of not spending the time with God and still think I'm fine, that's exactly where Satan wants me. That's where he wants all of us. Stuck. Stuck within ourselves and not even caring to reach out to the One who gives us everything - including the life we're wasting.
I think my prayer life, or lack thereof hit me last week when I was invited to attend an all night prayer vigil at my little church in Yerbas Buenas. I had never done, or thought of doing, anything like that before in my life. Ok, I can probably fill up at least 15 minutes of talking to God about stuff, but then what. What do I do for the next 6 hours?
I have been searching for the real truth for the past couple months. Not the stuff they teach in church. I want it raw and real. I've been reading what Jesus says. I want it from Him and no one else. And I've surprised myself about how passionately bitter I've become about some things that our present in the church that I belong to (but that's for a later blog). So, in the intent to spend the night doing some serious searching, I decided to go. Not knowing what I was getting myself into.
Let me just tell you something about the little Yerbas Buenas church. They are old. All of them. They are old and cute and wrinkly and they know all of their hymns by heart because they can't see well enough to read the hymnal anymore. When we got there (Stephanie and Jenessa were kind enough to come with me) after the VBS program at Km 6, Daniel was leading out in hymns. After about an hour of singing and listening to a little message presented by one of the hermanos, Daniel informed me that he was leaving because he was tired and had work in the morning. That little gesture left me in charge of the rest of the night.
Well, we were there to pray, right? So I got up to the front of the church and announced that we were going to divide up for some individual prayer time to really search for God. I said we were going to pray for 30 minutes and then come back together and sing some more songs. I looked at my watch. 11:17. I started my prayer. It felt a little foreign to me. Just because I knew I was going to have to continue for 30 minutes. I could hear the soft whisperings and mumbles of the hermanos. Then I started hearing feet shuffling back to their seats and talking. I looked at my watch again. 11:20. Oh, Lord, I said in my head, This is going to be a long night.
I went ahead and finished my prayer. Towards the end of it, the now-bored church members started singing hymns. It didn't take me very long to figure out that all they wanted to do was sing. They just want to praise their God. They lift their off tune voices to their Savior that they love. So we sang. A lot. Many hymns we sang. Many hymns we sang multiple times.
There was one little old lady in particular. She was a little tramposita (cheater) all night. She just straight up laid down on the cement floor and went to sleep. For the whole night. At the end of the night, rather, at 4:30 in the morning we all gathered together for one last prayer. A family prayer. We held hands and swayed in sleep. When it was her turn to pray, I was almost brought to tears. She called out to her Papacito Dios. She thanked Him for all of his blessings and asked for His presence in our lives. Papacito Dios. She was talking to her Daddy. And it was the most beautiful prayer I had ever heard.
Did I have any grand epiphanies after my praying and searching that night?
Not really.
Did I have an awesome God moment where heaven opened and I saw the singing angels?
Nope.
Instead I shared a simple night with a simple church family.
I did learn something though.
Life doesn't have to be as complicated as we make it.
Religion doesn't have to be as complicated as we make it.
God is our Daddy.
We are His children. His sheepies.
And this is what Christ's words have been teaching me: The passionate, I-would-do-anything-for-you, devoted love for Jesus needs to come first. And if we don't have that, everything else is in vain. All the religion. All of the hymn singing. All of the offerings. The church services. None of that matters.
God has been teaching me a lot this year. More than I ever thought possible. And it's funny how the lessons always come from the weirdest places. From the 3 minute prayers and simple songs of the old church members of Yerbas Buenas who stayed up all night to worship their Papacito.