Public prayers are rare. Schools do not have them as frequently, yet they remain in private classrooms. Public praying can be quite raw. Not in a vulgar sense but in an honest or or cliché manner. Public prayer is regularly unpolished. People will fight for the right to pray and others will fight to silence words to God. On the unusual occasion that one actually hears a prayer (most often in church) it may be rote or pithy.
For some reason I have been struck by one particularly bland cliché in prayer "God be with us." This is not an unusual request. This is not even an heretical request, unless it is to bless something evil within us. Actually, "God with us" is a refrain I would encourage people to pray. We want God to be with us in our problems, our life events, and in our difficulties.
The phrase got me thinking about a twist of the phrase. What if we were to more frequently pray "may we be with God" or specifically "may I be with God today." This phrasing could be a complementary balance to our insistence that God be with us, bless us and take care of us. There is room for us to alter our focus and be more active in being in the places where God is. This brings balance because it assumes that God may not be particularly interested in blessing some project of our own doing. It may be that God will not bless one more of our purchases, our petty worries about clothes that send a message, or our desires to please the people we want to please. What God may want is for me to be with Him.
May we be with God in this new era and enjoy the blessings of life with God.
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