thoughts about prayer

In reflecting on Jesus’ parable of the persistent widow, who keeps poking a judge in the eye until he gives her what she wants, Barbara Brown Taylor makes the following comments.

“… prayer like that [unanswered] can wear your heart right out, if you’re not careful – especially when there is no sign on earth that God has heard, much less answered, your prayer.  You can only knock so long at a closed door before your hands hurt too much to go on.  You can only listen to yourself speak into the silence so long before you start to wonder if anyone was ever there….  you are ‘losing heart’…

What the persistent widow knows is that the most important time to pray is when your prayers seem meaningless.  If you don’t go throw a few punches at the judge, what are you going to do?  Take to you bed with a box of Kleenex?  Forget about justice altogether?  No.  Day by day by day you are going to get up, wash your face, and go ask for what you want.. . .

One day when [my grandchild] ask me outright whether prayer really works, I am going to say, ‘Oh sweetie, of course it does.  It keeps our hearts chasing after God’s heart.  It’s how we bother God and how God bothers us back.  There’s nothing that works any better than that’ “

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I don’t know about you

But there are times lately when I “lose heart”

I know Jesus tells me not to go there,

But I do

I have my reasons

Plenty of them

I suspect many of you have them too

Yours may be different from mine

But there are certainly enough reasons to “lose heart”

to go around

poverty

hate

greed

violence

racism

exclusion

cruelty

injustice

inequity

illness

the list goes on

and there are times, it seems, that no matter how much we pray

not matter how many times we go to the God,

who is after all, Love

nothing loving happens

injustice still smirks in high places

greed still destroys the planet

lies are still ignored and tolerated (and believed)

we look at our own lives

at arthritis, and MS

and cancer, and chronic pain

and depression, and anxiety

and addiction

and we cry out for help. . .

and help doesn’t come

it is NOT just that we don’t see it

it doesn’t come

and so we lose heart

and yet

we are called to keep chasing after God

poking God in the eye

with our desire and anger and need

because here is the thing

there are things to be learned in the silence

things to be learned as we listen to our words

when the echo in the emptiness

in our persistence

sometimes, we find that we have it within us to overcome

in our persistence

sometimes, we find our desires and wants changing

our anger fading

our repentance growing

and sometimes, sometimes

an answer comes

something happens when we bother God

and God bothers us back

the world may not change, although sometimes it does

but we always change

always

and there is nothing any better than that