I am a wanderer. I would say that I am a seeker, but sometimes I have no idea what I might be seeking, so I will stick with wanderer. This blog is more a public journal than anything. I don't claim to have life figured out. I simply stumble from mystery to mystery, and share my reflections along the way. Sometimes I feel burdened, and trudge. Sometimes? Well sometimes grace breaks through, and its time to dance.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
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’ “
_________________________________________________
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
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