How we communicate with God

How do you communicate with God? Seems like a simple enough question, until I really get to thinking about it. Prayer is the obvious (to me) first answer. But so often that's only 1-way communication. How else do we give to and receive from God? I think John Wesley would have said we communicate with God through the various means of grace. Prayer is one of those, but so are reading the Bible, communion, fasting, doing good deeds for others, visiting the sick and imprisoned, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, working for justice, and through the giving of our tithes and offerings. Even in the midst of community, we are in communication with God.

I had an experience Sunday that made me think through this again. I was running around church taking care of some tasks when I saw one of the elementary teachers over in the main building looking rather frazzled and almost on the edge of tears. She was having an emotional moment. We had moved all the elementary classes into one group for the day and the plan was to show a movie. But the DVD player, projector, something wasn't working, and our children's director was out of town yesterday with a family graduation so she couldn't take care of the problem for the teachers. This gentle spirit knew everything would be OK and that she and the other teachers could keep the kids entertained for the allotted time, but when you're faced with a larger-than-expected classroom full of end-of-school, spring-fevered kids that you have to supervise for 60 minutes and your plan has just gone down the drain...

I asked her if I could say a prayer for her. I held her hands and prayed...for her, for the other teachers, for the kids...I not sure what I said. I have no idea if she heard any of the words I said or if they made any difference if she did. But I know that I touched God and I was better because of it.