Prayer time 27 May 2026
God, lend us an ear
So we may pray by listening to others.
Download a PDF of the prayer script
Orientation
Before a word is on my lips, you know it completely, O Lord.
Psalm 139:4, NIV.
We gather here, bringing our view of the world, the thoughts of our mind, the prayers of our heart.
Our prayer is already known completely by the Lord.
I am drawing on the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer this evening, as we pray into the idea of listening to God and listening to one another. Have a listen to this first warning about not listening — it is often helpful to begin with what something is not.
There is a kind of listening with half an ear that presumes already to know what the other person has to say. It is an impatient, inattentive listening, that despises the brother and is only waiting for a chance to speak and thus get rid of the other person.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 1938.
Let us remind ourselves that here, in prayer, our intention is to remember who we are and to whom we are connected. We are connected to the Lord, who, before a word is spoken, knows it completely. The Lord God is the great Listener.
As unique expressions of God's light and love in the world, we are to take that listening to the world we love. We are to listen with patience, attention — unmixed attention is prayer, Simone Weil taught us — and not wishing to be done with the person to whom we are listening. Not wishing away the conversation.
We too are to be great listeners.
As we like to say here, the prayer recognises us before we recognise it.
Haere mai, welcome. My name is Jacinda, I am simply your host.
Let us begin.
Relaxation
We'll take a moment to relax and settle where we are.
Start with a wriggle. Find your comfortable prayer position.
Do a sweep, top to toe, and make the small adjustments, letting your body catch up with your mind — that you are here now to relax, to concentrate, to meditate, to realise and to be grateful.
Through the jaw, let it soften. The throat. The shoulders, back and down. The chest. The hands, resting open. All the way to the floor beneath your feet, or the support of your prayer cushion.
Let the weight of the day go.
All the unfinished things of being a human being, they are probably well with you here — permission to remove them from your head and heart, put them down beside you, and there they can be for a little while. Set it down.
Attention to the breath, natural rhythm, as you are, gentle, gentle.
See the three different prayer postures:
being still
being silent
being alone.
Here we are, alone among others, in the prayer closet, a few good friends here, and permission to close your eyelids and disappear into the prayer closet or cave.
[Silence]
Concentration
Isaiah writes:
The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed. The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears; I have not been rebellious, I have not turned away.
Isaiah 50:4–5, NIV.
The ear is opened. The Lord does the opening. Am I turning toward God, or am I being turned? Isaiah's answer is in the text itself: the Lord opens the ear. The initiative belongs to the one who was already listening.
Bonhoeffer writes:
The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that He not only gives us His Word but also lends us His ears.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 1938.
God lends us His ears. The one who hears us completely is the one who teaches us to hear. God is the sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. The Listener is here, at the centre, which is where we are.
We listen to one another with what we have first received.
Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with.
James 5:16, The Message.
So turn within, beneath your lowered eyelids, take a breath, go within, and listen.
Who have you come here carrying tonight?
Our concentration together: A name. A face. A situation without resolution. These we hold in prayer.
And who in your life is waiting for someone to truly hear them, see them, know them?
Who do you see in your mind's eye who has forgotten they are enough, just as they are?
These are your prayers tonight, these are the people, situations, and conditions that we bring to God in prayer.
Before a word of prayer is even on our lips, every situation, person, place, and condition is fully known by the Lord.
So we rest a moment in silence. This is our prayer.
[Pause]
Notice where your heart is pulling. See the prayer forming, be it a thought, or a Dear God, please help prayer — let it form, and know that it is now known completely by the Lord. And as you pray for others, pray also for yourself. Remember who you are in God. Remember to whom you are connected. Align your thoughts with the idea that your prayer is already known by the Lord.
As our reading from Bonhoeffer has exhorted us, turn your listening ear to those in your orbit. Yield to the understanding and the knowing found in our opening scripture.
Yield to the truth of who God is — all knowing.
And as you listen to the needs of those around you, remember our inseparability from God and God's love and God's goodness.
[Silence]
And as we concentrate on God's goodness, all fear and discouragement abate from our prayers. We rest assured that our prayers are heard.
The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.
James 5:16, NRSV.
Meditation
Christians have forgotten that the ministry of listening has been committed to them by Him who is Himself the great listener and whose work they should share. We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 1938.
Bonhoeffer had Thomas à Kempis's writing The Imitation of Christ in his cell on the last night of his life. In Book III, à Kempis writes:
Blessed is the soul which heareth the Lord speaking within her, and receiveth from His mouth the word of consolation.
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book III, c..1420
The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.
Lamentations 3:25–26, NRSV.
Blessed be your soul, and may you hear the Lord speaking within you, and may you receive from the Lord the word of consolation.
[Ambience — Original music by Ocean Fal-Cav, permission granted, May 2026.]
[Silence]
Realisation
Turning to a hymn for part of our realisations this evening:
Hymn writer, poet, Methodist minister Thomas O. Chisholm, drawing from Lamentations 3:22–23:
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.
Thomas O. Chisholm, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, 1923. Public domain.
We work now with what we know.
I release the thought that my prayer must reach a distant God. Before a word is on my lips, I am already known and the Listener is here. I release the effort of producing the right quality of listening in myself.
The Lord opens my ear. Morning by morning. Freely given, freely I receive.
I release the fear that silence means I am unheard.
Thou changest not. Thy compassions fail not. I am held in faithfulness without shadow, myself and all that I give ear to.
[Silence]
I am already heard.
I listen with the ears of God.
Morning by morning, my ear is opened.
The listening I have received, I take into the world.
I am the pray-er and the prayer.
Great is the Lord's faithfulness unto me. I am not afraid.
[Silence]
A portion of James Dillet Freeman's poem ‘I Am There’:
Though you may not see the good, good is there, for I am there.
I am there because I have to be, because I am.
Only in Me does the world have meaning;
only out of Me does the world take form;
only because of Me does the world go forward.
I am the law on which the movement of the stars
and the growth of living cells are founded.
I am the love that is the law's fulfilling.
I am assurance. I am peace. I am oneness.
I am the law that you can live by.
I am the love that you can cling to.
I am your assurance. I am your peace.
I am one with you. I am.
Appreciation
We go from here as people who have been heard.
We carry that into the conversations we will have tomorrow and into the coming week, with the people around us who need a listening ear.
We give thanks for the groups of people we are a part of, and for the opportunity to deeply listen to one another.
We bless this community.
We are grateful that our prayers are always heard.
We are heard, held and loved.
We appreciate this time and place to be able to gather in community, and pray here in the stillness and silence, among friends.
E tō mātou Matua i te rangi,
Kia tapu tŏu Ingoa.
Kia tae mai tŏu rangatiratanga.
Kia meatia tāu e pai ai
ki runga ki te whenua,
kia rite anō ki tŏ te rangi.
Hōmai ki a mātou āianei
he taro mā mātou mō tēnei rā.
Murua ŏ mātou hara,
Me mātou hoki e muru nei
i ŏ te hunga e hara ana ki a mātou.
Aua hoki mātou e kawea kia whakawaia;
Engari whakaorangia mātou i te kino:
Nŏu hoki te rangatiratanga, te kaha,
me te korōria,
Āke ake ake. Āmine.
Matiu 6:9–13, Te Paipera Tapu.
Tihei mauri ora.
Prepared by Jacinda Faloon-Cavander for Unity of NZ