Prayer

There is probably no topic bigger than prayer when it comes to the spiritual life.  Which means there is no shortage of ways of talking about it.  Which makes it actually hard sometimes to boil it down or summarize it.  I tell the preschoolers in Chapel Chats that prayer is “talking to God.”  “You can talk to God anytime, anywhere, about anything… when you’re happy, when you’re sad…”  Communication is the very definition of relationship.  The modern world has doubts and questions, though—doubting whether or not there is anything bigger than ourselves, beyond what we can merely see and touch, that can be “in relationship” with us.  What do you do when you pray and don’t get an answer? 

            Do we have faulty expectations?  Do we expect God to respond in one way, when in reality God’s responding to us—shouting to us!—in a completely different way?  Deep down there are no easy answers to these questions.  Which is why a community of faith is so important to help us make sense of prayer and what that relationship can be like.  In the Gospel for this Sunday (Luke 18:1-8), Jesus tells a parable about the need to pray always.  A widow keeps bothering an unjust (!) judge to give her justice until he finally relents.  Jesus then rhetorically asks if God will “delay long” in answering our prayers and cries for justice.  “I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (vs. 8). 

            Persistence, not letting go, wrestling with God are the themes with prayer this Sunday.  What are you crying out to God for?  Is it “justice,” or peace, or forgiveness, or health, or assurance, or [fill-in-the-blank]?  How do we maintain our faith?  Simply put, it begins with hearing Christ’s promises and entering into his story.  That is our God in the flesh we are talking to.

Peace,

Pr. Christian