In grad school, I learned from Dr. Richard Heitzenreiter that John Wesley kept a record of how effective his prayer life was.  John’s diary had the letter P drawn out with a tic up the side, higher for more effective prayer, lower for less effective prayer.  John was said to wake up at 4am and pray for four hours each day.  Apparently the little ranking in his journal had nothing to do with how long he prayed, but how close he felt to God when he prayed.  It was actually an interesting way to keep record of one’s experience of prayer, and there’s a part of me that finds relief that this giant of the faith had prayer times where he felt distant from God.

I am currently experiencing a slump in my prayer time.  Like, I’m not feeling it so I’m not putting in the effort.  There are days where I try to have a focused prayer time and I just can’t concentrate, I can’t find the words to say, I feel like I’m talking to the wall.  I think these slumps are natural, and I recognize in myself a need to persevere even when it’s hard to focus.  What do I do with a loved one when I run out of things to say?  I don’t ignore them, do I?  No, I take time to enjoy their presence, to do something together, to keep my interest in them.  So though my prayer life is struggling right now, I’m really enjoying growing my faith through reading the Bible and commentaries on the Bible.

I want to shift gears here to address the heart of the comic today.  Charles challenges John’s obsessive take on spirituality, wondering if it will negatively impact future generations towards a works-righteousness view of faith.  It was a push back John and the Methodists often received in his lifetime.  With all this emphasis on holy living, might we create Christians obsessed with who’s in and who’s out based on how holy they are?  Do we create a sliding scale of who belongs at the table?  As someone who believed in a golden standard of holiness, I do not want to quickly dismiss this problem.  We Methodists say we are striving for perfection: perfect love of God and neighbor.  It seems like such an unattainable goal that we can become either complacent and give up, or obsessed and always trying harder.  I spent most of the last three decades of my life always trying harder, always seeing my deficiencies, growing resentful because of my shortcomings.  I struggled to allow my identity to be rooted in grace, and instead measured my worth by the ways I fell short.  The question “how holy can I be?” haunted me, as I thought I had to erase my humanity in order to belong in God’s righteous kingdom.

The trick of course, is to first be grounded in Christ crucified.  Not to say you’re so filthy that Jesus had to be tortured and killed in order for God to notice you.  No, you are so loved and so worthy that Jesus conquered death so that you might have life.  God became human so that humans can become godly.  God crossed the boundaries that separated us and has indelibly attached Godself to each of us.  This transforms us, little by little, day by day, to love more like Jesus loves.  My identity is beloved.  How holy I am or am not has nothing to do with God’s acceptance of me.  Because I am accepted, I am made holy.  Because I love God and am loved by God, every day provides a new opportunity for me to grow to be more Christlike.  God does not look at me today with disappointment because I’m not the perfect embodiment of Christ’s love in this very moment.  It is in accepting my acceptance that I am made holy.  There’s room for daily repentance, for daily recognizing the ways I’ve fallen short.  But that confession doesn’t lead to immobilizing shame.  It leads to freedom.