the Empathy List #64: How to Pray / Beyond the Personal Quiet Time

What the Evangelical Church Never Taught Me, Part 4

Hey friend, Liz here.

I gotta tell you, I had a whole other essay about church written to share with you, but it didn’t sit right. (That’ll be for next week instead, and it’ll be about how church isn’t a safe place for many of us. WOO HOO! That’ll be a party.)

Instead, I spent some private, one-on-one, personal quiet time during my car ride home from dropping my kids at their elementary school, just me and the divine, and suddenly, Jesus appeared in the middle of Dexter St. in a ball of fire and white robes just to say, in the voice of one thousand waterfalls, DON’T PUBLISH THAT.

Just kidding. Is that how your one-on-one time with Jesus works? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure the majority of us talk to Jesus the most when our health fails or we’re dumped. If we ever happen to flip open the extra ancient book called the Bible as a way to meet the divine, many of us do it with trepidation… or while nodding off.

I grew up in the protestant tradition where your job, as a Christian, was to write out as…