If I leave my office and the work I do there to go spend a day by the lake in prayer, am I wasting time? In my office I am reading and studying, writing sermons, managing budgets, making decisions, establishing communication, caring for people, meeting with  leadership, developing plans, implementing systems, and the list goes on. But when I pray, I am doing none of that. So am I not working when I’m praying? Am I giving up the important for something trivial?

Jesus withdrew to pray often, spending a significant amount of time in prayer. This was time, then, that he was not spending on preaching, teaching, meeting, healing, serving, leading, or doing anything else. Would we have considered that misplaced priorities? Mismanaged time? We might have, especially when there was so much “important” work still left to do. Plenty of sick people to heal, towns to visit, sermons to preach, authorities to challenge, lessons to teach, miracles to do, disciples to train, and the list goes on. But Jesus didn’t consider it a waste of time.

Prayer was the work important to or necessary to all his work.

Before he begins his ministry, he prays. Before he chooses his disciples, he prays. Before walking on water and calming the storm, he prays. Before his transfiguration, he prays. Before raising Lazarus from the dead, he prays. Before he is betrayed to be crucified, he prays. Before he breathes his last on the cross, he prays. Before every crucial decision and critical time in his life and ministry, Jesus prays.

The God who created time, in the flesh of Jesus Christ, took time to pray.

Matthew tells us that one day Jesus “went out of the house and sat by the sea” (13:1). Did Jesus have the time to sit by the seaside? A crowd was gathering, looking for him to teach them. What Jesus did while he sat there we aren’t told. But maybe that time was a time of reflection, of preparation, of delight in His Father’s presence.

Prayer is coming back to center. Prayer is setting things straight. Prayer is rightly ordering the desires of our heart. Prayer is bringing our lives (back) under the guidance and provision of God. 

So there by the “seaside” or by the lakeside, in a time and a place that we choose, we set ourselves apart and we surrender control. We surrender autonomy. We lay down the rush and the frustration we feel from trying to do things all the time in our own strength and in our own way. We remind ourselves that apart from Him we can do nothing on our own. Sitting by the seaside is how we will learn to pray in Gethsemane, “Not as I will, but as you will.”

This is the work of prayer: the daily work of centering our lives on God. This is the work important to all our work.