“Since each person possesses his own unique characteristics, predispositions, and abilities, he will use different ways and means to achieve one and the same goal. In like manner, there are many ways to achieve the goal of the inner activity of prayer, as can be seen from reading the insights of the Holy Fathers.”
I stopped at this opening paragraph in the appendix of The Way of the Pilgrim and the Pilgrim Continues His Way. The subject is prayer, but my thoughts wandered into the many ways we encounter God—in salvation, in worship, in relationships, and in the ordinary places where we spend our days.
We bring different histories, temperaments, wounds, and hopes to those encounters. We may sit beside one another in the same church, sing the same hymn, and receive Communion at the same table, yet what happens within each of us is deeply personal.
My years in the church have taught me to respect that difference. Sometimes the lessons have been painful.
My mother told me about a cousin who responded to an invitation at a revival meeting. He came forward and stood at the altar. The preacher insisted that he get on his knees and sob like the other sinners so he could be saved.
Our cousin turned around, walked out the church door, and never returned.
I have remembered that story so often. Someone came forward seeking salvation, and the response he received was a demand to express himself in a particular way. What was happening in his heart? We cannot know. Neither could the preacher.
I remember conducting a baptism by immersion in a Baptist church. It was a moving service. Afterward, a Catholic man who attended with his Baptist spouse told me I needed to baptize the person again because I had not used the words “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
Evidently, he had not heard me say them.
I understand that those words mattered to him. They mattered to me too. But the encounter reminds me how easily what we did not hear or perceive can become certainty about what someone else did.
Another family story brings a little humor into the conversation. My great-grandfather, Nathan Lafayette Pearson, could neither read nor write, yet became a successful businessman. He attended a Baptist church where the preacher would call on men, without warning, to give the benediction.
When he called on Nathan, my great-grandfather took a flask from his coat, took a swig, and said, “You pray, preacher—that’s what we pay you for.”
That story still makes me smile. I cannot tell you what Nathan was thinking, but he certainly made his feelings about being called upon clear. Being present in worship does not mean everyone is ready to lead a public prayer.
And then there are my own mistakes.
I once served a church where some members spoke in tongues. I did not know that they did, and I had little firsthand experience with the practice. One night I preached the longest sermon of my life—more than an hour—against it.
Afterward, a member came to me. With love and humility, she told me that she spoke in tongues and that I did not understand what it meant to her.
Both her words and the way she spoke stayed with me. Here was someone speaking from her heart about an experience I had judged without understanding. She gave me reason to listen and reconsider.
So when I speak about our preconceived ideas concerning how God should work, I include myself. I have held those ideas. I have preached them. I am still learning to recognize where my understanding is incomplete.
The apostles had to learn too. Peter encountered God at work in people he had not expected to welcome. In Acts 10, he was told not to call profane what God had made clean. Later, he witnessed the Holy Spirit come upon Cornelius and his household.
I find myself asking: Who am I to dismiss what God may be doing simply because it is unfamiliar to me?
I also think of Peter at the Transfiguration, proposing three shelters in the presence of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. Scripture does not tell us that he intended to reproduce the experience. Still, I recognize in his response our desire to hold on to a holy moment—to give it a form we can preserve.
I understand that desire. Our rites and traditions can help us remember, participate, and grow. I cherish prayer, baptism, and the Eucharist. But I want to hold my understanding of them with humility, remembering that God knows more of the person before me than I ever will.
This week, I encountered that reminder in a mechanic shop.
Erin, who worked behind the counter, told me how she believed God had given her the knowledge and opportunity for the position she held. As I watched the people in that shop, I saw every customer treated with grace and humility.
I had taken my car in for service. I came away grateful for something more: a conversation and ordinary acts of kindness that helped me recognize God’s grace at work.
Now I stand amazed when I recognize that grace.
I think of the old hymn by William Cowper: “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.” Those words express something I have seen throughout my life. Again and again, grace has reached me through people and circumstances I could not have arranged or predicted.
The appendix is speaking about prayer. I am allowing its opening observation to raise a broader question in my own life: Can I respect the particular person God is meeting, even when their experience differs from mine?
Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience all help me discern. So does listening to another person with enough humility to admit that I may have something to learn.
We encounter God anywhere and everywhere. I want to keep my heart open enough to notice.
Where have you recognized grace in an unexpected place? Has someone’s story ever helped you reconsider how you thought God should work?
Source: “Three Keys to the Interior Treasure House of Prayer,” Appendix, The Way of the Pilgrim and the Pilgrim Continues His Way, author unknown, translated by Olga Savin, Shambhala, 2001, pp. 187–191. This reflection grows from the opening paragraph.
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