To Pray, To Serve, And To Think

Elton Trueblood wrote:  “The three necessary elements of any genuine Christianity are, first, the experience of inner vitality that comes by the life of prayer, second, the experience of outer action in which the Christian carries on a healing ministry, both to individuals and to social institutions, and third, the experience of careful thinking by which the credibility of the entire operation may be supported.  Religions tend to die when any one of the three is omitted for an extended period of time.” Life, too, withers when any of these three elements are missing.

I would suggest that all three elements are necessary for any person who seeks to be really alive and fully human.  It is the vocation of every person.  We are all called (whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or even as one without religious label) to pray, to serve, and to think.  We are called to do all three together.   This is one of the best things we can do for this troubled world just now—to pray, to serve, and to think.

Volumes have been written about what it means to pray. Is praying that difficult that we need thousands of books to explain it to us?  I would suggest that prayer is a natural response to life and something everybody does spontaneously in good times and in difficult times.  To sit quietly along the seashore and ponder the incoming waves without a word is a form of prayer.  To sit, silently, at the bedside of a dying mother, father, or child is prayer.  To celebrate, to give thanks, at birthdays, graduations, and other precious moments, is to pray.  To examine one’s own life as each new day is born is to be engaged in prayer.  To do all this consciously is to pray. There is more, of course, but I don’t have the space….

Likewise, we are all called to “carry on a healing ministry” to individuals and to social institutions.  This kind of service is as natural as living itself.  Every mother, father, sister and brother serves.  Every person serves—if that person cares—and every person who prays learns quickly to care.  A word of greeting, of encouragement, of interest in another person’s well-being is a form of service.  There’s more, of course, but I don’t have the space…

Every human being thinks!  The hope is that every person will think out of the experience of his or her praying and out of his or her experience of serving—thinking outside one’s own ego, thinking outside one’s own box, and thinking outside one’s geographical location.  To pray, to serve, and to think are not religious exercises.  They are the vocation of every human being.  What we are (a praying, caring, serving, thinking person) is more significant in the long run, than what we do, for it is impossible for a man or a woman to give what he or she does not have.  There’s more, of course, but I don’t have the space…