Some of you may have seen the rainbow out over the harbour on Tuesday morning. Its’ colours were vibrant and the bow stretched all the way down to the water. It felt as if you could almost touch it. But the sad thing is I nearly missed the rainbow altogether.
You see, earlier in the morning, I was in my office getting on with my day’s work. I was busy, when Josie called out, “Dad, dad, come and have a look at this.” I was a bit slow to respond. I felt slightly exasperated by this interruption. But finally I pulled myself away from my desk, and I went outside. “What is it”’ I said, without feeling. “Two rainbows,” came her reply, speaking like she’d just observed something magical. “Look at them”.
So I looked, and I said: “yes, they’re lovely”. Then I went back inside, sat at my desk again, and I would’ve forgotten all about them, if I hadn’t been given a second chance. For, a little later in the morning, as I was driving to a meeting in the Hutt, I think I saw what Josie saw earlier. The brightest rainbow I’d seen for some time was there before my eyes. I was transfixed by its beauty, and filled with a sense of wonder and hope.
That morning I learnt a lesson I won’t easily forget, and I learnt it from a child.
Now, rainbows, of course, appear in our first reading today. There, in Genesis, we hear the story of the flood and of the covenant God made with ALL LIVING THINGS.  I like that last bit. Often we think it is all about us. But, as we’re only starting to appreciate, God’s concern is not only for us humans, it’s for all of creation. God looked at the stars and the seas, the birds of the air and the wild animals, ‘and God saw that it was good.’
And even when we turned our back on God in the Garden of Eden, God was there to give us a second chance. After the flood had destroyed the face of the earth, God said “I will never do this again”, and as a sign of this promise, God set a rainbow in the clouds. 

I think a problem for many of us as we grow older is we become less attentive to the sights and sounds and smells, and the tastes and the touches, of the world around us. And, by this, I don’t simply mean we’re so busy that we miss the rainbows. We’re also frequently blind to the people we meet and deaf to the words we hear. Overloaded with information, and distracted by our concerns and fears, we miss out on the moment.
I think this is often true, as well, when we come to church. We sit down in the pews, we may even smile at the person beside us, but we are not really here. We look, but we do not see. We listen, but we do not hear. We participate, but we do not experience.
I thought of this as I read through the liturgy for today’s baptism. There, amidst the rich imagery, which brings to mind, as First Peter reminds us, the story of Noah and the flood and the promises of God to all living things, is a phrase which jumped out at me. The words speak of our willingness to share with the other “a delight in prayer.”
Now, I wonder how many of us, if we’re honest, delight in prayer. Does it fill us with a sense of wonder and joy? Does it draw us closer to God and to those we are praying for? Or is prayer something we struggle with, or no longer can find a place for in our lives?
On Tuesday, I asked the children, who came along to the pancake party, “what is prayer?” For, here we are at the beginning of Lent and one thing we are encouraged to do during this season is to make space for prayer. One child said: “Prayer is talking to God”. “Yes, it is,” I replied. “Prayer is talking to God. In prayer, we say thank you to God for our good lives. In prayer, we tell God of our hopes and hurts and longings. In prayer, we bring before God those we care for and the concerns we have for our world.
And we do this because we believe God listens to us.”
But, then I went on to say: “But it isn’t just about talking. In fact, prayer is mostly about listening. And to listen well we need to be attentive to what or who we’re listening to.”
This is the lesson Josie taught me the other day; it was a lesson in paying attention.
 
There’s a great book, called “Tuesdays with Morrie”, which picks up this idea.  Mitch Albom is a driven man in his thirties who one day sees a former professor, a person he knew as “coach”, on the TV. His now aged professor is dying of motor-neuron disease, and he’s been interviewed at home. The show catches Mitch’s attention and he decides to pay Morrie a visit, and what follows is “the last class” of his old professor’s life.
“I believe in being fully present,” Morrie said. “That means you should be with the person you’re with. When I’m talking to you now, Mitch, I try to keep focused only on what is going on between us. I am not thinking about something we said last week. I am not thinking of what’s coming up… I am talking to you. I am thinking about you.”
Learning to pay attention, being fully present, is the message of this book, and it comes from a man one could excuse for being self-absorbed or consumed by self-pity. And it’s being attentive to the beauty of the world, to our neighbours and our friends, and to the religious rituals we take part in, that I believe is the essence of what prayer is all about.
Prayer isn’t a matter of words. It’s not a posture or a petition. Prayer is a way of being in our world. It’s learning to detach ourselves from our memories of yesterday and our hopes for tomorrow, and to be fully present in the moment, that we may be penetrated by the beauty and goodness of the other, and so experience God’s love for us right here.
So may we, during this season of Lent, these forty days of preparation before Easter, learn to pay attention, to delight in prayer, to feel God’s presence in the world around us, in each other, and in the bread and wine we share. So that, like I learnt from a child, our eyes may not be blind to rainbows, our ears not deaf to another’s words, and that we may shine with God’s life when the storm clouds gather and the rains begin to fall.
Let’s stand to sing…

A sermon preached in St Alban’s Anglcan Church, Easbourne, on 1 March 2009 by the Ven Damon Plimmer.