Prayer: Part Five

I haven’t been through so much, not like the protagonist in the book of Job. It is hard to imagine what he went through. A devout man, praying for his family continually, a good businessman, a good friend, and everything turned against him.

He lost his wealth. Bandits killed his livestock, fire from heaven killed his employees, and a great wind crushed the house where his children were eating. He must have thought long about the dying moments of his employees, his children. Then he was covered, head to toes, with sores.

I haven’t been through so much, not like the parent in Somalia who watches her child slowly starve. Or the orphan wandering the streets after a tsunami.

But we each have experiences that shape us. It seems that when we have been pushed the hardest we grow the most. Not a pleasant experience.

I have had some unpleasant experiences. I have been gravely ill. I have been kidnapped, and mugged. I’ve been stranded afoot in a snow storm (caught pneumonia). Once I was in a sand storm. It shredded my tent and I sought shelter from the stinging sand under an over turned picnic table for several hours until it passed. I have held and kissed my dead child in my home, in my drive, in the emergency room, and in the funeral parlor. About ten years ago I thought that my marriage was doomed. I’ve had back injuries and skin disease. I’ve had dreams come true. . . and seen them turn to nightmares.

And I feel joy.

I feel joy, and I feel strong, and I feel protected.

What a long strange trip it’s been.

I am currently struggling with how to deal with my child’s mental illnesses while lending my wife the strength she needs. And as I look at the task set before me I am in awe of my creator. He prepared me for this challenge by using difficulties times.

When they used to make swords they would heat and fold the metal over and over, mixing the carbon with the iron to create steel. This would make the metal strong and flexible. The heat of the forge and the pounding hammer on the anvil creates a tool, a weapon, that is resilient and capable.

I sometimes feel like that sword. When life takes us into dark places we are pounded into new shapes. Afterward there is often an imperfection. We become a little bent. We slide our fingers over the damaged areas and even if it isn’t visible we can feel. . . well, a little bent.

But we are stronger. We are better able to take the next blow. The soot, the carbon of the flames, the traces of the furnace are beat in, blended with who we are. We are stronger.

I dearly loved Willy. That little boy who was my dream child, who looked like my baby pictures, who laughed and cooed and giggled. . . But he died, and that event bent me in ways that will never be smooth again.

They say that after decades of persecution the Church is flourishing in China. Many gave up so much for their faith in that country. They gave up their homes, their freedom, sometimes their lives. And now it flourishes. Could it be that the struggle is what made it grow so well? Could it be that the muck and filth of human oppression was needful nutrients to make that hard soil fertile?

Could it be the same for the individual? Could it be that hard times force us to rely on Him, make us better able to serve? Could it be that when we are forced to strive, to struggle and weep and grieve, that we draw closer to the only true strength in the universe?

Let me tell you something about how it affected me. Imagine the human heart as a dial, its needle pointing to its current emotion. You might find that the range of that dial changes during a lifetime (some get wider, and some get narrower). I know that when I was a teen it was a small thing. The needle's pointed range of emotions was short arc. Sure, I felt it was large (teens are so dramatic), but it centered on me. If I was a little sad, a little happy, a little whatever, it wiggled to and fro; it was pretty much all about me.

As I grew and as I experienced, the range of that wavering needle swept into new areas. The death of Willy made it burst, double, triple what it could feel. I grieved over my child, and I grieved over the losses I saw in the world. My heart felt like some living thing bursting out of my chest. It was covered with spikes and it felt like it was trying to kill me. And I found in the midst of my anguish that the world was filled with pain like mine. I had never noticed that there were so many people weeping. My world had been much smaller, my heart had been much smaller. Now it was big enough to hurt for others.

As I face new tasks, I see that the hurts of my life make me better able to handle new challenges. That isn’t to say that I am capable of handling them on my own. I am not. The work at hand is bigger than I can bear. Fortunately my LORD is quite capable of lending me the resources I need. My confidence in Him makes it easier for me to tell my trembling legs to hold still, not run.

That is why I feel joy, strength, protection.

The greatest source of this new found strength, new found courage, is prayer. It is in the knowledge that I am entirely weak and unable. I can do this because He holds me up when my knocking knees will not. I get that from prayer.

I used to think of prayer as something my grandmother would do. It was something for little old ladies. Though I had heard it was for everyone, I thought that real men don’t pray. It was something folks did in groups at church and was preceded with a litany of sad stories, spoken in somber seriousness without joy.

Today I find that prayer is not about a formulae of penitence and begging. It is something that is whispered and shouted and laughed and screamed and wept. And I am still a real man. I don’t worry about what others may think. It is a private thing, and it is a public thing. It is sharing with Him who I am, where I am, and what I am feeling. It is about a relationship. . . my sharing, my giving of me to Him.

I have found value in praying about a single topic day after day (this year I spent a couple of months praying a focused prayer about Jesus as my shepherd). I have found that it is useful to sometimes pray flat on my face, and sometimes shouting at the sky. Prayers can be written, and even drawn (and both! That prayer on The Shepherd was written in tiny lettering on a wall forming a life-sized image of Him.).

But if you are unused to prayer, where to begin? I have a recipe for prayer that I am teaching my children.

Take three gratitudes and place it in your heart.
Mix in three concerns for others.
Stir with love for two minutes.
Ask for strength for two of your largest concerns.
Dust with two more heartfelt thanks.
Frost with a praise and an amen.

It is a simple prayer that fills the soul and can be served hot from the passion of your heart, or cool with the joy of everyday living.

That sounded a little corny. (Sorry.)

I want to say that prayer is more than going to Him with requests (please heal. . . please give me. . . please teach. . .). Those are fine. But there should be more. I find that in starting a prayer in praise and gratitude it puts my heart in the right framework. The real point is in sharing my life with Him and He sharing His strength with me.

I’d never make it without it.

Prayer: Part Four

When people talk about the point of the book of Job they often sum it up as addressing such questions as: “Why do people suffer?” or “Why would a good God allow bad things to happen?”

I think those are the wrong questions.

I’ve been thinking about my life lately, and if it was a story I was reading I would have to say it is fiction, and poorly written at that. But, as one of my favorite authors was fond of saying: “Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.” (Mark Twain)

There has been a lot of suffering going on lately. The United States has seen some of it. Katrina, Rita, 9-11. . . As bad as those were, the world often sees worse. The December tsunami, war, famine. . . And there are catastrophes coming: the African AIDS epidemic, the Asian flu. And worse is possible: collapsing ecologies, nuclear arming of rogue nations, near Earth asteroids, global warming, earthquakes in California, the impending La Palma volcano tsunami. . .

Christians posit that our creator is good, that He loves us. So how can there be so much heart ache, so much suffering? What of my own aches? Why did Willy have to die? Why are my children of such low intelligence? My heart is aching today with new challenges that frighten me, that threaten my family. Why would He let such things happen?

There is a song about starvation by Sade that nearly makes me weep:

Pearls
There is a woman in Somalia
Scraping for pearls on the roadside
There's a force stronger than nature
Keeps her will alive
This is how she's dying
She's dying to survive
Don't know what she's made of
I would like to be that brave

She cries to the heaven above
There is a stone in my heart
She lives a life she didn't choose
And it hurts like brand-new shoes

Hurts like brand-new shoes

There is a woman in Somalia
The sun gives her no mercy
The same sky we lay under
Burns her to the bone
Long as afternoon shadows
It's gonna take her to get home
Each grain carefully wrapped up
Pearls for her little girl

Hallelujah
Hallelujah

She cries to the heaven above
There is a stone in my heart
She lives in a world she didn't choose
And it hurts like brand-new shoes
Hurts like brand-new shoes


This isn’t fiction. There are people dying today because they haven’t enough to eat, searching for grains of rice in the dirt. My own son has the marks of starvation on his body.

Is this right? Is this just? Why doesn’t He do something about it?

No. No. And, He is.

We were given a sense of right and wrong, and these things feel wrong. God gave us that inner set of balances to judge our world. And these things are wrong. But we live in a fallen world and it was inevitable that it would be. If it wasn’t Adam or Eve who broke the LORD’s commandments it would have been one of their children.

So what is He doing about it?

Well, what are you doing about it? The Bible says that we are the body. Our hands are supposed to be doing His work. And if we listen to Him, we will know what that work is. It is an amazing feeling.

As I have hinted things have taken another strange twist. And for now, hints are all I feel free to give. But the task before me is huge. Bigger than getting through the grief of the death of my first child. Bigger than adopting my next two children.

But though I am not big enough to handle this, He is. And I know that since He has given me this task, it will be accomplished. He will provide the strength, the patience, the endurance, the resources to do whatever He wishes to be done.

How do I know? He told me. I prayed that He would permit me to feel Him near, to let me know that I do not walk this path alone. And I do feel Him! There is a sense of peace about me that pervades all the tension, all the fears. I know that He will sustain me, protect me.

I know this because I have been praying. I have let Him into my life and He pours grace into it continually. It sounds nuts, I know, but I will not curse Him for I see that He is good. He works wonders continuously.

Here is a wonder that amazes me: He has forgiven me for all I have done wrong. Every selfish act I have ever committed He has forgiven. And I keep doing them! I try to obey, but I continue to fail Him, and when I go to share my life with Him, I find that He brushes aside my short comings with a fatherly smile and welcomes me back! He never tires of my coming to Him. He is always ready to hear what petty things seem important to me.

Prayer is what it is all about. And the more I pray the more I realize that the hurtful things that happen in the world are all about being a part of a mortal life that is full of selfishness, self-centeredness. And as far as that goes, I can handle a brief century of hard mortal experience, especially if it prepares me better to be of unique service to Him in an eternal immortal one.

He generally avoids the flashy setting of things straight with miracles, though I know He will do those in a pinch. If He were to step into the world and right every wrong it would be such an over abundant source of proof that faith would no longer be faith but merely sight. We need to believe in Him because we are listening to our hearts, not our minds. But the biggest miracles He performs are the quiet ones. The change in peoples’ lives. The softening of hearts.

That is a miracle all of us can have. And it is right there, right now. All that is needed is a quiet moment, and a repentant heart offered in humility.

So whatever path you are on, know that He wants to walk beside you. He is following your movements anyway. He just needs you to offer him a closer spot in your life and He will draw close.

Why do people suffer? Why would a good God allow bad things to happen?

A better question is why does He love me so? I am so fickle and self-absorbed.

The real question is why does He honor me so much as to give me difficult tasks to do for Him? What a privelege to be told that such mighty tasks are mine!

We choose to listen to our minds rather than our hearts. Our hearts are telling us a story of love, and if listen we will see that our hands are the hands of Him.

Prayer: Part Three

The most fervent prayer I ever made, the most consistent, steady, intense prayer I ever lifted up to Him, was for a child.

“Oh LORD. Oh God. I want a child. Please grant me a son to raise. Please give me someone to teach and to love. Please, give me a child.”

It went unanswered.

I met my wife leap year day, 1980, and the years crawled past. There were hopes raised, and hopes dashed. B. became pregnant, but it was a tubal pregnancy. So I repeatedly asked God for a child. Whenever I saw little kids, and my heart ached, I asked God for a baby.

I hadn’t talk much to Him. I had spent most of my time doing the usual self-absorbed living our species does. But now I prayed.

“Oh LORD. Oh God. I want a child. Please grant me a son to raise. Please give me someone to teach and to love. Please, give me a child.”

It went unanswered.

We began attending a local church. Our first Sunday there the pastor spoke about the long awaited hope for a child suddenly being fulfilled. We went home, prayed and prayed and prayed.

And He granted us a child. A miracle of improbable circumstances, finances, and timing. I had been praying and reading in scripture about this. My biblical studies had focussed on the Abraham & Isaac story, and things (finances, spaces, food, clothing. . .) fell neatly, tightly into place.

And he died. The child died.

And I prayed.

I wept, and I grieved. I hurt with an ache that I had never felt before. I woke each morning with a heavy heart and I fell asleep each night wishing I was dead. I went for walks in the fields and woods in the middle of the night, and I felt like I would never smile again.

I walked across newly fallen snow softly lit by stars, I walked through rain, and I walked through fog illuminated with dawns’ first red light.

And I prayed.

I read Job and saw how he prayed: weeping, raging, quietly, and defiantly. I prayed likewise.

I struggled with the idea of a loving God who could permit this terrible anguish. I read the papers and the internet about Angola, and Haiti, and Afghanistan. I wondered at the immense suffering of people throughout the world, throughout time. How they suffer, how they are cruel, how they are evil. I wondered at the tragedies people go through and questioned why it should all be so ugly.

And I prayed.

I examined the beauty of nature, rainbows, sunrises, flowers and rivers and mountains and the cycles of the moon. I felt the stirrings in my soul of indescribable beauty and depression, and wondered at the range of emotions a human heart can hold.

And I prayed.

I prayed in groups and I prayed in solitude. I sang praises to the rising sun, and to the risen son. I prayed to the God who made me, and to the God who kept me breathing when I would rather be laid in a grave. I whispered prayer in the dark, and I shouted angrily in the dawn. I prayed in songs and I prayed in screams. On my belly, on my knees and standing defiantly on precipice.

I prayed.

I learned that I can pray through words, and songs, and whispers and shouts. I learned that I can pray through art and writing and even dance (if one could call my sideways shuffling a dance). And I learned an important thing about prayer.

It isn’t really about requests and praises and psalms. It is about communication. It is about sharing a life. . . my life. It is about sharing dreams and fears, joys and sorrows, love and anger.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, ‘Where are you?” Genesis 3:8-9

This was the way we were designed to interact with God. Casually. Regularly. A sort of “See ya this afternoon! We’ll sit on a rock and chat.”

If you struggle with praying, don’t worry so much about the how. Whether it is The Lord’s Prayer or the Prayer of Jabez. Whether it is a humble "thank you" at a meal, or a whispered word of gratitude as you drift off to sleep, it doesn’t matter where you start and what is said. Just start. Just say something. Anything. Let it grow into something more. Let it grow into prayers of reflection and prayers of praise. Let it grow into rants and songs and adoration and whatever else you may feel.

Every relationship requires communication. So, pause, right now, this very moment, and whisper a “thank you,” or a “I wish to know You more,” or a “Our Father who art in heaven. . .”

There is power in prayer. Things happen when we pray. And the most important thing that happens is that He and we get to know each other.






p.s.: If it helps to pray for someone else, I would be grateful for a prayer for my family and my health. Things have gotten a little rough again.


God bless.

Prayer: Part Two

It isn’t good news.

46.

46 points.


Let me make this part of my essay on prayer the prayer I pray today. . .



Oh LORD. I am Your servant. What You would have me do, I will do. Sometimes it tastes of ashes, sometimes it is a stony path, but I will follow where You lead.

I love him LORD. I am grateful You gave me this child. No matter that my dreams turn to dust, I know that an eternity awaits and the events of a mortal life are brief.

“Remember that my life is a breath. . . (Job 7:7)”

I begged for a child, and I am grateful that You gave me two (three). I fear the path ahead LORD, I know it will be difficult. And I ask no more than to feel You near.

You gave me intelligence, and I hoped to share my passions with my children. But I see now how that cannot be. Very well. I am Yours and I will obey.

Oh LORD You gave me so much more than he. I would give half of my mind to make his whole.

I see clearly who he is, the psychologist’s words ring true and I understand what I did not know before. Where I was blind now I see, even if it is through bleary eyes.

I rejoice in knowing You LORD, and I rejoice in knowing what is truth, even it is bitter.

“I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit: I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. . . (Job 7:11).”

I wish I could teach him the things that I love. Ah. . . my LORD, my master. . . I will, none the less, teach him what is the most important thing You would have me teach him. I will teach him the only great truth that has ever been discovered.

That the LORD my God is a being of love. The LORD my God is the source of every good thing. The LORD my God has a plan for my life, for his life, that includes freedom. It includes freedom from all bondages. It includes the birth right that is ours when we are adopted into Your family.

By the claim I have in Your son, my brother in the ultimate family, I claim freedom for my son. I claim freedom for my child. I claim that good SHALL COME FROM THIS!

I LOVE YOU LORD! HEAR ME TODAY! I CALL UPON YOU TO ALLOW ME, TO ALLOW US, TO FEEL YOU NEAR!

Amen

Prayer: Part One

Preface:
I want to share with you a few thoughts about prayer. But it is such a big topic that I am going to deliver it in segments. The last few years prayer has become a big part of who I am. Today I bring you the first piece, an event of nearly 30 years ago. . .

Part One: 1976

I was very sick once. I was dying. I had been living in a yogic ashram and had gotten carried away with meditation and fasting. I went weeks without eating. After a year or so of this my system had enough. It quit. I was extremely anemic. I had bouts of amnesia. I was no longer getting much nourishment from what I ate. I kept getting weaker. I was dying.

That was OK. I was ready. I felt it was just. I had abused my body, seeking spiritual visions and what not, and I was receiving the natural consequence for what I had done. I went off to die. I was staying in Ojai, California and when I felt it was over I went down to the Ventura river. In the summer it wasn’t much more than a creek running through a wide river bed.

I had spent a couple of months there. It was a good time for reflection, that summer of 1976. I had seen 14 of the last 24 condors alive in a tree there. I had stolen honey from bees, and sat under a fig tree and thought about the fact that I had spent so much time trying to reach some sort of spiritual enlightenment (they called it sammadhi), and had simply used my body up. There was a beauty in that dry place that I had become comfortable with, familiar with.

I had given up on the meditation and spent the time reflecting on life, nature, and praying. The praying was something I had stopped doing and now I had returned.

I wasn’t praying for my health. I wasn’t praying for much of anything. I was simply appreciating the beauty of the natural world and saying thanks.

I wasn’t sorry about dying. I was sorry for spending what I had been given on something worthless. I had forsaken the joys of a natural life for the pursuit of “astral planes” and “enlightenment.” I know, pretty hippyish. What can I say? I was a teen when “Kung Fu” was on the air and it sort of imprinted.

Dying was the just result of what I had done just as much as if I had spent my life on drugs and reckless living.

So I laid down on a sandy spot of the river bed, a few minutes before dusk, ready to pay for my foolishness.

I prayed.

“LORD, I am sorry. You gave me this body and I didn’t take care of it. You deserve more from me. Please forgive me.”

I felt a little vertigo, something I felt often, felt the breeze running through my thin beard, the sand under my head, and then a feeling that something was coming. Slowly I looked up the river bed and I saw the flood. Not of water, but of light. It was like a golden dust a hundred feet high and it rushed down the river bed and washed over me. And, almost audible, not with my ears but with my heart, I heard a voice.

“You are forgiven. There are things yet for you to do. Stop the foolishness you have been doing and get up. Go home. I love you.”

The point here isn't about a miraculous healing. I believe that the healing of my body was secondary to a more important lesson I learned. I learned something about love and gratitude. I was grateful for all He had given me. I had come to learn that I had been given wonderful resources and I had squandered them. I also learned that He loves me. Really loves me. He cares about what I think and feel and learn and do. He wants to be a part of a bigger story than the one I had lived for only twenty years.

Now I have added thirty years to that story and I understand much more about how He can be a part of a story that has helped me become something different, something better. I am still a foolish man. A mortal who gets off track and does silly things.

But the biggest part of prayers, then and now, is that they are not about requests or needs or sorrows or grief or even joy. Those can be a part of it, just as they are for any meaningful relationship. He wants to walk along side of me. To be my God, my master, my LORD, and my friend. He wants to share my life. He wants me to talk to Him. The point of prayer is not about achieving miracles, or even being obedient. The point of prayer is in being a part of a relationship.

So often our prayers are requests. I don’t think He minds listening to them. He wants to be a part of our lives, and our needs are important for Him to hear. He may even grant our requests for no more reason than persistence.

But I believe it depends more on whether or not what we want is truly in our best interest. What is important is that sometimes He goes beyond what we seek and gives us grace.

Things happen when we pray.

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If you do not have such a relationship and would like to chat privately with me about it, leave me your email address and I will contact you. We can then delete your address so others don't send you spam. I am at your service in any way that pleases Him.

God bless you. Know that He loves you very much.