I have a long list of places I want to visit someday, exotic spots scattered all over the world. I've had the privilege of visiting a few of them, but my list is still long. It includes Tikal, down in Mexico's Mayan Empire. It includes Machu Picchu in the mountains of the Andes. It even includes the photographer's dream of Tierra del Fuego clear down on the Southern tip of South America where I hope to photograph penguins. Each stop on the list is an exciting goal. One of those goals is to visit Nepal, get as high as I can in the mountains and watch the prayer flags flutter in the breeze beside a monastery. With every flutter they send a prayer to God. I'd love to be there.

Those fluttering flags symbolizes being able to communicate directly to divinity—with the simple moving of a flag. Or, as it was in Puerto Rico where I was raised, believers communicate through the simple glowing of a candle. Or, as I have seen it in so many Christian churches around the world, people kneel down, close their eyes, fold their hands, and speak words directly to God. Although I enjoy all of the symbolism, I have a concern. Too often communication with God is seen as a one-way street—us talking to Him, and occasionally Him listening, and once in a while Him responding in some productive/materialistic/miraculous way.

Consider an alternative concept. In the Old Testament sanctuary, the one where the Israelites actually put up their own traveling temple as they moved from Egypt to the new land of Canaan, there was always incense burning in the Holy Place, the place of God's throne. But it was unique incense. Where most incense produces a little smoke that goes right on up to the ceiling, this incense was extra heavy. The incense recipe included the operculum of a mollusk that is lives only in the Gulf of Aqaba. The artisans would take the little trap door off the murex, and pound it into as fine a powder as they could get. But when they put that in the incense, instead of being up-to-the-ceiling incense, it became crawl-out-over-the-edge-of-the-table and-fill-the-room incense.

I believe that symbolizes what prayer is really all about—about filling the room with conversation. Communication with God is so much more than just me talking to Him. It is us—God and me in active communication—that absolutely fills everything I am, everywhere I am.

My wife Brenda has worked for many years as a home health nurse. When we first moved to Washington D.C., Brenda was terrified because D.C. is so different from her family home in Minnesota. Back home everything is straight roads arranged in one-mile grids. But Washington D.C. is a mess! Roads change names and meander along ancient cow paths so that you can't find anything!

So, Brenda said, "I have to find some way to make all this make sense and to bring a little peace into my life as I drive the streets of D.C." Do you know what she did? She asked God to send an angel to join her in the car. "Frank" she called him. She couldn't put him on the passenger seat because that's where she kept her charts, so "Frank" sat in the back. Brenda spent months talking to "Frank" about finding her way in a confused world. That's what prayer is all about.

Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 12, says it this way; "You will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you, and I will be found by you."

When the prayer flags flutter, when the candles glow and the incense rises, all of that is symbolic of me talking to God. But, even more exciting, is God's promise of being right there, making sure that I don't just flutter—I actually find Him and hold a two-way conversation with Him. Our relationship, like the incense in that Old Testament temple, fills everything I am and provides me with everything He knows I can be.

—Dick Duerksen