Recently, I visited an old friend in a local hospital.
This patient had a severe medical condition, and was to receive major surgery
the next day. Her daughter was present, seeking to encourage her, and she
told her mother with confidence that the surgery would be successful because
this was a great hospital with talented surgeons.
The daughter then gave me a friendly greeting, and said to
me, "Would you please say a prayer for Mom's recovery."
Praying for a person's health, for a favorable outcome to an
operation, has implications that ought to disturb a thoughtful person. If
prayer works the way many people think it does, no one would ever die, because
no prayer is ever offered more sincerely than the prayer for life, for health,
and recovery from illness, for ourselves and for those we love.
If we believe in God, but we do not hold God responsible for
life's tragedies; if we believe that God wants justice and fairness but
cannot always arrange for them, what do we think we are doing when we
pray to God for a favorable outcome to a crisis in our life?
Do I really believe in a God who has the power to
cure malignancies, but will do that only if the right person recites the right
words of prayer in the right language? And will God let a person die
because a stranger praying on his or her behalf got some of the words wrong?
Furthermore, if we don't get what we prayed for, how
do we keep from being either angry with God, or feeling that we have been
judged and found wanting? How do we avoid feeling that God has let us
down just when we needed Him most? And, how do we avoid the equally undesirable
alternative of feeling that God's neglect is because of His disapproval of us?
There are several ways in which we can answer the person who
asks, "Why didn't I get what I prayed for?" And most of the
answers are problematic, leading to feelings of guilt, or anger, or
hopelessness:
--- You didn't get what
you prayed for . . . --- because you didn't deserve it.
---
" "
"
--- because you didn't pray hard enough.
--- "
"
"
--- because God knows
what is best for you,
better than you do.
---
" "
"
--- because someone else's prayer for the
opposite result was more worthy.
---
" "
"
--- because prayer is a sham; God doesn't
hear prayers.
---
" "
"
--- because there is no God.
If we are not satisfied with any of these answers, but don't
want to give up on the idea of prayer, there is one other possibility. We
can change our understanding of what it means to pray, and what it means for
our prayers to be answered.
Not all things are appropriate subjects of our prayers to
God. We should not ask God to change the laws of nature for our
benefit. Nor, make fatal life conditions less fatal or change the
inexorable course of an incurable condition. Sometimes miracles do happen.
We don't know why some people die in car or airplane crashes, while other
people, sitting right next to them, walk away with a few cuts and bruises and a
bad scare. It is hard to believe that God chooses to hear the prayers of
some, and not those of others.
So, what can prayer do for us, to help us when we
hurt? Prayer does put us in touch with God. I am not sure prayer
puts us in touch with God the way many people think it does ---- that we
approach God as a supplicant, a beggar asking for favors, or as a customer
presenting Him with a shopping list and asking what it will cost.
Prayer is not primarily a matter of asking God to change things. If we
can come to understand what prayer can and should be, and rid ourselves of some
unrealistic expectations, we will be better able to call on prayer and on God,
when we need them most.
Instead of trying to make a deal with God, we need to
believe that there is no way in which God can be paid for blessing and helping
us. We need to be saying, "There is only one reason for my turning
to You now ---- because I need you. I am scared. I have to face up
to something hard tomorrow, and I am not sure I can do it alone, without
You. God, you once gave me reason to believe that I was capable of making
something of my life. If You meant it, then You had better help me now,
because I can't handle this alone."
In this view of prayer, we are asking God to change
something within us. Importantly, we are asking God to make us
less afraid, by letting us know that He is at our side, so that whatever the
next day may bring, we will be able to handle it because we will not have to
face it alone.
I believe that is the kind of prayer that God answers.
We can't pray that He make our lives free of problems. We can't ask Him
to make us and those we love immune to disease, because He can't do that.
But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the
grace to remember what they still retain instead of what they have lost,
very often find their prayers answered. They discover that they have more
strength, more courage than they ever knew themselves to have. Where did
they get it? I would like to think that their prayers helped them find
that strength. Their prayers helped them tap hidden reserves of faith and
courage which were not available to them before.
The man who has lost his job or closed his business, and
tells me he is too old and tired to start all over again, but starts over again
nonetheless ---- where did he get the strength, the hope, the optimism that he
did not have on his first jobless day? I would like to believe that he
received those things from the knowledge that God is at the side of the
afflicted and the down-cast. The God I believe in does not send us
the problem. He gives us the strength to cope with the problem.
We don't have to beg or bribe God to give us strength or
hope or patience. We need only turn to Him and admit that we can't do
this on our own. If we acknowledge that we are not alone, that God is on
our side, we can manage to go on.
___________________________________________________________________________
These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult
Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage some personal spiritual growth
for you this year at CPC.
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