devotionFIFTEEN - Prayer: Our Bodies

“[Jesus] walked away, about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed” (Luke 22:41).

In The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, an elder demon schooling a younger in deception says, “[humans] can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls” (Screwtape, Letter IV).

Read it again: whatever our bodies do affects our souls.

While many of us pride ourselves in the fact that we may spontaneously pray to God whenever, wherever, and however we please, such freedom should not—must not—keep us from formally and intentionally praying before God. We must enter our closets. We must get on our knees. Or our faces.

Some of us do a bang-up job of disconnecting our bodies from our souls—but they are not separable. The body reflects the spirit. We are material as well as immaterial. We are not simply spirits and neither should we believe ourselves to be. God created us body and spirit. Our bodies are part of us, just as Christ’s body is part of Christ. Therefore we stand in reverence or kneel; we lift up our hands; we dance; we cover our faces and beat our chests. We adore God in spirit and in truth, with our bodies and our spirits. Love the Lord your God with . . . all that you are. And we are bodied.

When I love my wife in the future, I do more than simply speak my love (and even speaking to her is, in itself, a physical act). I hold her hand; I fold the laundry; I kiss her lips. I show my love and affection for her, body and soul.

We are wrong to believe that our relationship with God ought to be devoid of our bodies. That is the error of the Gnostics. The body is not evil; God made it. God himself now possesses a body, and has ever since Jesus was born some two thousand years ago. So when we are commanded to love our God with all our being, it includes loving him with our bodies.

The Scriptures speak of standing, raising our hands, beating our chests, falling on our faces, and kneeling in prayer (e.g., Acts 9:40; 20:36; 21:5; Eph. 3:14), but they do not speak of sitting or reclining in prayer. The biblical narrative is full of the stories of God’s people engaging their bodies in prayer.

We stand to honor a person—the President, or a woman who excuses herself from the table. We kneel to show reverence and fealty to royalty. And yet as we approach the throne of God—we sit? Our standing signifies something. Our kneeling signifies something. Our sitting signifies nothing. Or at least, our sitting signifies what we ought not to signify in the presence of the Almighty.

You can certainly pray spontaneously as you go—while walking, cooking, driving, working, diapering, or gardening. But when you are intentional in vocal prayer—voicing your heart in words, spoken or unspoken—show your intentions with your body. As you come before him in prayer today, kneel or stand in reverence. Open your hands to receive him. Raise your hands in adoration of your Creator, your Savior. Beat your chest, cover your face, and pray for mercy.

“To human animals on their knees [God] pours out self-knowledge in a quite shameless fashion” (Screwtape, Letter IV).

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