Richard Littledale
Richard Littledale
radio microphone
BBC Radio 2Janice Long Show
Alex Lester Show
Pause for Thought
Richard Littledale: Series 22, Number 4
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Thursday 11 April 2013

Every once in a while, I like to ring the changes when I am preaching a sermon in my church. Just recently I decided to liven things up a bit by going all interactive. We thought about some famous people praying in the Bible. There was grumpy Jeremiah, saying how little he wanted to be a prophet. There was foolish Jonah, speaking up from deep down in the belly of the whale. There was Moses too, sighing and shaking his head over the people he was leading, who were driving him nuts. As people shouted out the things they remembered about these prayers, I wrote them up on a big sheet of paper. By the time I had finished - it made for quite a list: anger, disappointment, guilt, and even paranoia!

The trouble is, I am both untidy and forgetful. BY the time I remembered that I had left my big sheet of paper in the church, it was too late to retrieve it. There it was, stranded in the midst of a sea of buggies parked up from our toddler group and there was no way I was getting it back.

This is the moment at which a person in real need and wanting to pray came and sat down in the church. Looking up above the buggies, there was a great big sheet of paper with the words "anger, disappointment, guilt and paranoia" written on it. Not much of a welcome to church, you might think. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Feeling bad about herself and not sure if God would want to listen to her pray, those words were all the encouragement she needed. If other people could pray like that - so could she.

We often get tongue-tied about how to pray and what to say. On one occasion a small boy was asked to say grace when the minister came to tea. Unable to find the words, his mum prompted him by saying "just say what your father said at breakfast this morning". Out came the honest prayer: "O god, we've got that awful man coming to tea tonight"

Oh well, - you can't win them all, and at least he was honest.

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© BBC 2013
This talk by Richard Littledale was first broadcast as BBC Radio 2's night time "Pause for Thought"
at 01:30 during the Janice Long show and at 03:30 during the Alex Lester show.
It is reproduced here by permission of the BBC.