Wednesday, August 25, 2010

A baby's ramble on prayer

Aιτειτε και δοθησεται υμιν, ζητειτε και ευρησετε, κρουετε και ανοιγησεται υμιν
Matthew 7:7

Eαν τι αιτησητε εν τω ονοματι μου, εγω ποιησω
John 14:14

My good brother in Christ and fellow blogger wrote,

Consider a prayer asking for anything you can think of: something shallow, like a new car. Something more meaningful, like our gentle old grandmother being rescued from cancer. This whole exchange is rooted in the assumption that things are meant to go a certain way. If we had not prayed, we would have not gotten the car, grandma would have succumbed to the cancer. One of the crazy things about this is, sometimes we act like we’ve got a reality by democracy. We do our little prayer chains and prayer requests and all those things as if the idea is, if enough people vote our way God will change the world. Another crazy thing is, that we act like God must be simply making it up as he goes. Or that we are so different than those people who tried to argue God out of his plans. Because, the thing is this: if God had a plan for us not to get that car, we are asking him to change the plan for us. We’re not any different than those people in the bible… except that, oftentimes, we’re doing it for much more selfish reasons.

This was a very perceptive post. I liked what he wrote a lot. It was very realistic. I especially liked what he said about the democracy of the prayer chain. “…if enough people vote our way God will change the world…”

It makes me wonder, really, why people do these things.

Jesus does say,
“Whatever you agree upon in prayer, ask, you will get it.”
(cf. Matthew 7:7, John 14:14, wow! the chapter and verse numbers!)
The reality, though, is that this doesn't seem to happen
much of the time.

Is it because we haven't enough faith?
Or because we haven't fasted?
Or because we're too sinful for God to hear us,
let alone grant our request?
Or because He has already decided to do something His way not ours?

The Jews have a saying in the Talmud that I have made much use of.
“Undo your will for the sake of Heaven, and Heaven will undo its will for your sake.”

Of course, you know by Heaven they mean God. You know how the Jews are, they are afraid to say "God" in case that is taking His name in vain. God bless ’em!

A large part of the problem is that existence is not as linear and flat and “Yes or No” as we think it is. As C. S. Lewis wrote, “it all seems planless to the darkened mind, but that's because it is ALL plan” (Perelandra). When the picture is too big for us to see, and it usually is, existence and the events and things that fill time are too much for us, yet we pray to move mountains, and that is really some mountain!

For me, it boils down to this. Prayer, like most divine things, is a mystery. It's not ours to understand it, but ours to do it, not looking for mechanical results, but accepting that it is necessary only because God commands us to do it. When Christ says, it will be done for you,” He isn't promising that it will look the way you expected, but also, He doesn't want us to cynically ‘spiritualize it’ in our philosophical way, like the fox who couldn't reach the grapes calling them sour, and say, “Well, He answered my prayer, I just don't know how,” and then pretend to believe it. All these humanistic workarounds to try to justify God to our intellects are just a waste of time.

Prayer is a commandment and a mystery, just like everything else that has to do with, not only God but, existence.

“The Being” (Greek > Ο Ων, Ηο Ón) has had a contraction within Himself, making room for us to be, like a woman's body makes room in her womb for the embryo, then for the baby. Neither we nor the unborn baby know what's going on. We just exist, not even knowing that we exist, until God says it's time for us to be born for real.

And when that happens, intellect, watch out!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear brother Romanos,
This reminds me of C. S. Lewis's: "The efficacy of prayer" from "Letters to Malcolm" remember?
Thank you.
Mary Lona

Hilarius said...

Dear Romanos -

This is a very fine post - thank you!

You listed several rhetorical questions. One was whether we have forgotten to faste. In relation to fasting and prayer, one Lent past I posted a series of 40 days in the desert of Lent where I looked at fasting.

My recap, for what it's worth, is here: recap

I think you are right that we often have not purified our hearts sufficiently and as a result our prayers are not very consonant with the will of God. To me, this puts the idea that the "prayers of a righteous man availeth much" in a different light.

Even then, we see that prayers are definitely not answered "our way" - even when fervent, heartfelt prayer is made in fasting and sackcloth - King David holding vigil over his sick child comes to mind.

While we are asked to make supplications, we are also taught that the first things to prayer are to announce that name is Holy, that His Kingdom come, and that His will be done on earth and in heaven.

Alas, most of the time even when I pray for His will to be done I suspect (and often know) in my heart I am desiring just the opposite in so many things.

Thank you again for this.

Ρωμανός ~ Romanós said...

Dear brother Hilarius,

What an oversight on my part not to have brought to mind the "pattern prayer" of divine origin, the Lord's prayer.

But having brought it to mind, I can clearly see how even praying the exact words of that prayer, with meaning, possibly outweighs (I don't know if that's the right word) anything any one of us could pray spontaneously.

And yet I know many Christians, of the non-liturgical type, who wouldn't be caught dead praying the words of the Lord's prayer because they have been taught that such prayers "out of a book" are just rote prayers of no value.

What a disaster of thinking! Though I admit that it might be difficult to pray a home-spun, spontaneous prayer by rote (I think I have witnessed such, nevertheless) and easy to pray "out of a book" by rote, there is nothing intrinsic to either style of prayer that need relegate it to the category of false prayer. It all depends on one's attention and intention.

The best prayer, like the best and most real fasting, is the brief "Father, help us!" that is uttered without self-conscious need for formality or propriety by a soul that is crying out of urgency, just as we forget to eat when pushed beyond our reasonable limits by the pain of a loved one.

Thanks for the link to your post about fasting from 2007. Yes, it was a good testimony.

In Christ our all,
Romanós