“Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.”
Oswald Chambers – My Utmost for His Highest

They hang behind the heavy doors of the world’s most famous museums in dimly lit, climate-controlled rooms where sunlight is the enemy. They stand roped off on cold marble floors, and spill from the ceiling onto the walls of an over-crowded chapel as tourists strain to glimpse their mastery. They rise like intrusive aliens from flat desert landscapes and bring audiences to their feet with the inspired music of angels, while brilliant words of triumph and tragedy endeavor to capture it all.

I have seen them, heard them, and read them—well, many of them anyway. And they are, indeed, exquisite, undeniable masterpieces.

Michelangelo’s sculpture of David captures the marvel of the human body in a single piece of stone. The frescos of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel are unfathomable in scope and detail. Starry Nights and Sunflowers reveal the canvas of an artist’s soul with mere paint and brushes. The wonder of The Great Pyramids. The jubilant Hallelujah Chorus of Handel’s Messiah. The wit of Twain. The woe of Tolstoy — all great works indeed.

I am a lover of great art. Not a brick or brushstroke, melody or metaphor is wasted on me, but there are greater works still, and in an amazing plot twist that could only be crafted by the Author of all that is beautiful and worthy — we are the artists.

Our medium is prayer.

The marble hands of David are considered genius for their size in proportion to the statue itself, yet they cannot clasp together in warrior-like prayer to battle the forces of evil in a marriage in crisis or a son in addiction. (2 Corinthians 10:3-4)

More beautiful than the intricate refrains of man’s greatest compositions, is the simple sound of a child’s voice as they pray their first prayers at the invitation of the One who is eager to hear about their scraped knee and their love of strawberries. (Matthew 19:14)

The Great Pyramids were built to transport the dead rulers of Egypt and their possessions to the afterlife. But these dark tombs and their contents never left this world, though how quickly our prayers do. With our first utterance, our prayers transport us from a world of anxiety, sin, temptation, guilt, depression, frustration, hopelessness, pain, confusion, sickness, loneliness, and grief to the very throne of God’s grace. (Hebrews 4:16)

The world’s great libraries are the storehouses of man’s most celebrated words, and yet I know I would find none there more powerful and reassuring than the words I have heard my husband pray over me and our family in the times when my own words failed me. His prayers are different than mine. Direct and confident, he talks to God with decided trust. He knows God hears his prayers, but I hear them as well, and that, husbands and fathers, is gold. (James 5:16)

Years ago, I stood in the center of the Sistine Chapel and looked up—there it was. The Creation of Adam. Two fingers. One mortal. One Divine. Both reaching toward the other, almost touching. Almost. But there was space between their fingers. Michelangelo left it there. And through the centuries, art critics and enthusiasts have had a hay day struggling to interpret what it means.

Since the first time I read it, Oswald Chambers quote has never left me, and through the years I have had a hay day trying to interpret what it means. For too long, I fear I judged the “greatness” of my prayers by their outcome, more grateful for God’s answers than for the Divine masterpiece of prayer itself.

I have come to understand…

In the great work of prayer, there is no space between us and our Heavenly Father. When we pray, we touch God. And the even greater work is that He touches us.

“Since therefore, brethren, we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith…” Hebrews 10:19-22