Lessons:
Psalm 124
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50
People pray all the time, even some people who don't consider themselves very religious. You can hear such prayers in all kinds of places. "Oh, God!" "For Christ's sake!" "Jesus!" Sometimes expletives are added. There is just something in human beings that makes them call out to God when they find themselves in a crisis--or at a ball game.
Today's epistle from James of Jerusalem, also known as the brother of our Lord, addresses the topic of prayer. James says, "The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective." My first thought after reading these words of James was that I wished he had not included the word righteous. Many people already struggle with prayer, feel as if they don't know how to connect to God, or feel as if God isn't always listening, and I would not want them to believe their difficulty with prayer is a judgment on their righteousness. God does not set any barriers or conditions on prayer, because prayer is open to everyone, and all prayer can be powerful and effective.
I would like to share with you some of the things I have discovered about prayer in my own search for a closer connection to God.
Maybe the most essential thing I have learned about prayer is that my desire to pray comes from God. We pray because God invites us into a conversation with him. God knows all of our needs and desires before we even speak the words, yet God wants to hear from us. That very longing we feel for God as we enter into prayer is our guarantee that God is present with us.
Human frustration arises when we don't feel that God answers us, when our prayer seems more like a monologue than a dialogue. Why does this happen? We enter prayer with good intentions, and we wish with all our hearts to be answered by God. When we don't receive the kind of answer we expect we may feel like failures--or worse, that God has failed us. But it isn't that our prayers are inadequate or God is inattentive. I believe the difficulty lies in the way we think of God. If we imagine God to be at a great distance from us, so that our prayer is a reaching out across a vast space, then it is easy to expect God not to pick up our call. He is too busy, or he just can't hear us. But God is not at the farthest reaches of interstellar space. God is Spirit, and that Spirit dwells in our very hearts. God is always present, and our prayers to God simply acknowledge that Presence. To hear God's response, we have to learn to listen with our hearts, not with the ears of our minds.
As Father Martin Smith says in his book, The Word Is Very Near You, "Prayer is communion between all that we are and all that God is." Since we "live and move and have our being" in the constant presence of God, all that we say and do can be seen as prayer, if we choose to see it so. That may be what James had in mind when he used the word righteous--if we are always aware that our words and deeds are performed in the Presence of God, then we will want them to be worthy of God. Our very lives are prayers.
Thankfully, God is merciful! In fact, if we ponder with humility the idea that our lives are an ongoing conversation with God, then we have abundant cause to believe that God is infinitely merciful. If I weigh my own life on a righteousness scale, I have certainly done more things that I wish God had not seen than those I am glad He witnessed. How very blessed I am to be the recipient of so much grace! What a relief to know that God's love for us outweighs all of our sins!
Believing that God is always with us, how do we learn to listen to God with our hearts? St. Francis de Sales advised Christians to spend a half hour every day in deliberate prayer, and he added, "if very busy, pray for an hour." He did not suggest an hour's worth of words pouring from us, however. The prayer of this St. Francis is simply being quiet in the presence of God. Here is how he described it: “If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Master's presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back and place it again in Our Lord's presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.” The practice or habit of prayerful connection with God will be its own answer and reward in the peace it brings.
Christ himself suggested something like this in Matthew 6 when he said, "Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him." In giving us what we call "The Lord's Prayer," Jesus suggested just a few things to address in prayer: gratitude for our blessings, mercy for our failures, and protection from danger. Beyond those things, Jesus seems to say, we must leave the rest to God.
So, prayer isn't so much about what we have to say to God, but how we receive what God gives to us. How often do we pray half-heartedly, with the door to our heart only slightly ajar, I wonder? As Christian philosopher Simone Weil said, "God continually showers the fullness of his grace on every being in the universe, but we consent to receive it to a greater or lesser extent. In purely spiritual matters, God grants all desires. Those who have less have asked for less." That bears repeating. "In purely spiritual matters, God grants all desires." We can pray to be more open to receive God's grace, and that prayer will be answered. We can pray to feel God's presence and to understand God's purpose for us. If we open wide the doors to our hearts, such prayers will be answered.
The only way to open wide the door to our heart is to be fully aware of the present moment. If we are not fully present, how can we expect to experience the Presence of God? That is exactly what St. Francis de Sales meant when he said, " If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Master's presence." We can leave behind the words and the confusion caused by words if we think of prayer as an openness, an attitude, a way of being and not a way of speaking.
In his wonderful book on contemplative prayer, Everything Belongs, Richard Rohr says, "Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It is, rather, a stance. It's a way of living in the Presence, living in awareness of the Presence, and even of enjoying the Presence."
Awareness, or present-moment living, brings with it many gifts. When we are distracted or anxious, too caught up in worries or the task at hand, we may miss the blessings God so lavishly sends our way. Preoccupied, we may not see the butterflies in migration or the changing patterns of the leaves. We may fail to hear a child's innocent and charming question. We may lose an opportunity to demonstrate our love for someone in need of love. Surrendering all of our distractions to God opens us to the blessings of the moment. God speaks to us in these blessings.
There are some days, however, when we cannot experience our lives as being blessed. Of course we face dark days, sickness, and grief along the way. Of course there are times when we cry out in desperation or anger to God. Of course there are times when we feel God is very far away and our prayers are useless. My own experience has been that being in the practice of prayer as awareness of God's presence allows me to feel God's mercy and grace even more keenly when my need is greatest. Surrendering my hardships to God offers release and blessed reassurance. At such moments I feel deeply Dame Julian's promise, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."
Surrender to God in the present moment and gratitude for our many blessings are two natural components of prayer, and they seem to be the most important ones. Whether we actually fall to our knees in prayer or feel ourselves to be inwardly kneeling, when we turn our lives over to God, we surrender our will to His. Thomas Merton's famous prayer says much about the uncertainty of prayer and the blessing of surrender:
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. [The Merton Prayer]
What a blessing it is simply to surrender! The only appropriate response to such a gift is gratitude. As the mystic Meister Eckhart said, "If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough."
Thanks be to God!
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