I have been asked recently to think about prayer. Our presbytery is beginning a program called Vital Congregations, and in preparation, I was asked to contribute my thoughts on prayer resources, practices, and such. But one of the questions in particular has kept me thinking for days. That is, how has my thinking about prayer changed over time?
The assumption, of course, is that it has changed. This is true. No longer are my prayers as they were in childhood. When I was young, I was taught, as so many of us were, to recite short little rhyming prayers – at the dinner table, at bedtime. We might learn to make up our own prayers within certain frameworks – like thank you, God, for lemonade and hula hoops; and God bless mama, daddy, and Tatters the dog.
But with maturity comes more freedom and responsibility in all things – including prayer. Not only who and what we pray for but how we pray. How is the hardest part of it, because when we turn to prayer we almost always have our own agenda.
So much of the time, spontaneous prayer begins with something like, Dear God, please…
Please make the cancer go away.
Please let him be safe.
Please let me get this job.
Please, God, help me out.
Please, God, make the problem go away.
A very distraught woman called me in tears to tell me her desperate situation. There were practical and concrete steps that could be taken – and would be taken. But in that moment, I suggested that she pray. She said to me, “I already tried that, and it didn’t work.”
When we turn to prayer, we almost always have our own agenda.
When it seems as though our prayers have not been answered, we find ourselves in a difficult place, unsure where to turn or what to think. What is prayer for, if not to help us through the turbulent waters of life? What are we doing other than asking for divine strength to carry us through the rough spots?
Praying for oneself is something almost everyone does, even nonbelievers. Prayer is something that seems to spontaneously arise from our center when we know we are in need. And for people of faith, praying for others comes almost as naturally. We keep lists of individuals, groups, nations, that are somehow in need of prayer. And very often we feel we know exactly how to pray for them. For comfort, for strength, for peace, for safety.
When it seems as though God hasn’t answered our prayers for others, in the way we wanted or expected, what then? We might throw up our hands because there seems to be nothing more we can do. We might even be angry that we fell for what was presumably a trick of some kind.
One Sunday when I offered a prayer for peace in the Middle East, someone stepped up to me after the service and said, “Boy, you are a dreamer, aren’t you?” As if to say, Grow up! Get real.
Yet, we are told, we are assured, that we can make our prayers for anything. We pray for what we need, and God welcomes our prayers. And the truth is that these prayers are good prayers. We may always pray for what we feel we need.
But the truth is, also, that these prayers are not enough in themselves. When we pray according to our own agenda, we are accepting a very limited view of God. God invites us to pray in other ways that involve entering more deeply into the mystery of God.
Hence, Paul urges Timothy to pray for those who hold high power. This is essential, Paul writes, because God desires for everyone to be saved. Everyone. God’s spirit is magnanimous.
And while this might sound like a really nice idea, generally speaking, we have certain objections when it zooms on the particular. God wants our enemies to be saved. God wants people in the other political party to be saved. God wants the people who cheat and get away with it to be saved. God wants the people we love to be saved, but also the people we don’t love. The people who, we know, don’t deserve it.
And this is so hard for us, that God’s spirit is much more generous than ours.
In the Episcopal Church book of common prayer there is included a prayer for elected leaders – for the president of the United States and the Governor of our state. For Congress and the State legislators. If you are in church when these prayers are being made, you may very well hear these individuals prayed for by their given names. For our Governor, Larry. For our President, Joseph. It makes the prayer feel very personal.
But it can be challenging, even for those congregations who make of regular practice of this. If a leader is elected who is very polarizing, if members of the congregation have a strong emotional reaction to the very thought of him or her, there might well be strong resistance to continuing these prayers.
I have seen some of that resistance in Presbyterian congregations. The idea of praying for a high official whom you resent in certain ways can seem a very tall order. We might even reject the notion altogether, thinking, “Let other people pray for him or her. Leave that to the people who voted for them and who actually want them to succeed, not me.”
Still, in this letter, Paul tells Timothy that it is essential to pray for kings and others who are in high positions. This is for the sake of our own godliness and dignity. But it is also for the sake of the ones for whom we pray, because, Paul says, it is God’s desire for everyone to be saved.
When we pray according to our own agenda, we will eventually hit a wall. When we ask God to assist us in our own plans for our lives or other people’s lives, we will at some point be disappointed. But what if we respond to this disappointment by asking God, “What then, Lord, would you have of me?”
Eventually on our walk of faith, we might discover that prayer is much more than making our requests of God. That God is so much more than a divine butler or a genie in a bottle, ready to serve our desires and needs. God is waiting, always, for us to be ready to listen. God is inviting us to change.
Scripture uses the image of a potter fashioning a vessel out of clay to say that we are malleable in the hands of our Creator. Our God desires to mold us into a form that is more holy, and the way this is done is through prayer. When we set aside our agenda and we invite God to show us something new, then we might learn to think the way God thinks.
God’s intention for us in prayer is to draw us closer. We know that when a mother holds her children tightly in her arms, they are not only close to her, but they are close to one another. In this way, we know, God draws us nearer to all of God’s creation. God’s desire for us in prayer is to show us how connected we are to everyone and everything else in all creation because God is our parent who loves us. God wants to open our hearts and our minds.
And so God asks us to pray for everyone – our leaders, those who are in positions of power, whether we like them or not. They, too, are God’s beloved.
God asks us to pray for the neighbor who annoys the heck out of us. They, too, are God’s beloved.
God asks us to pray for the young man who walks into a school or a church or a supermarket with a gun, intent on doing damage. Because he, too, is God’s beloved.
God asks us to pray for the ones who need it. And that is everyone.
God asks us to pray, because God knows that prayer is the way to transformation. Prayer will change our hearts and form us more fully into the image of the one who made us and loves us.
In your prayer life, where are you feeling resistance? Perhaps this is precisely where Christ is leading you.
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Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash
