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Good morning.

Insights into how others view my Christian faith often come unexpectedly.

In a London theatre a couple of summers ago for example,

at a thoroughly entertaining play called Apologia.

Stockard Channing played an art historian, 60s activist and first-wave feminist

lamenting the world鈥檚 lazy regression from her hard-fought social victories.

As if to crystallise her disappointment

she learns her son has met his new girlfriend at a Christian prayer meeting.

听

Her barely-disguised horror has raised a smile from me

on the first Thursday of every month ever since,

because that鈥檚 when we meet for our regular parish prayer meeting.

Where liturgical and intercessory prayer are the mainstays

at Sunday and weekday services,

once a month we have a time of guided but informal prayer.

Some pray aloud, some pray silently;

some come prepared with prayers they鈥檝e written beforehand,

some pray on the hoof.

听

Who knew that what we were doing might be perceived

even for the purposes of a dramatic plot

as so bewildering and apparently so threatening?

For the play鈥檚 author,

a churchy setting for the son鈥檚 romance

seemed the perfect conformist affront to his mother鈥檚 trail-blazing radicalism.

But then, one person鈥檚 normal and natural can be

another person鈥檚 foreign and frightening.

Moreover

where prayer at the invitation and in the name of Jesus is concerned

what might seem to some

the most unappealing and uncomfortable of devotional labour

can be for others the most energising and edgy of front-line discipleship.

听

Lord, though prayer is often misinterpreted and misunderstood,

awaken us to the reality that however we do it

it is not incidental but essential, not unquestioning but revolutionary,

not safe but incendiary. Amen