Pray without ceasing? That’s easy, no problem. It seems, at least in my neck of the woods, everywhere I look needs prayer. In my home state of Georgia alone, over the past few weeks we’ve had tragic accidents, natural disasters, bio-lab fires, crimes resulting in officer fatalities and a fatal shooting at a public high school.
Often in the wake of disaster, especially one that feels preventable, is a call or demand for action. Lately, I see this phrase a lot and it breaks my heart,
“We don’t need thoughts and prayers, we need [legislature, resources, restrictions, money, leaders, insert whatever would theoretically solve the problem at hand.]”
I understand the sentiment, I really do. If prayers feel like mindless, lofty, little passive pleasantries that we throw around in the aftermath of unthinkable evil and recklessness, then I understand why one’s blood would absolutely boil with anger at that type of hollow insult to egregious injury.
But, that is not how I understand prayer.
In fact, I think making a statement of that nature reveals more about how powerless the speaker feels in their prayers. Perhaps their prayers have seemed to go unanswered. Perhaps they have been previously harmed by what someone called prayer. I don’t know but I’m sure their feelings are valid.
But it breaks my heart because in this case, prayer has been misrepresented. Prayer is more than good thoughts and well wishes. Prayer is more than words. Prayer is more than empty laments and condolences.
Prayer is the place we make meaning. We are meaning-making beings. We give form to the feelings and responses that arise within us when we see someone else or experience for ourselves pain or injustice. Our hearts search for the root, the reason, the rendering of what brought us here. Prayer gives us the pause to turn from our own isolated reactivity and into a conduit of more productive and promising influence over the collective connection we share with the world.
Prayer is the place where the spirit moves. When we are moved to pray, it means we have successfully recognized the spirit moving in us. The greater we can grow in this attunement, the more effective an instrument of God we can become. Prayer is our practice place for attunement. The spirit moves, we pray, we surrender through this process all those “thoughts and well wishes.” Instead, we let the spirit guide us and we allow ourselves to be formed for what God wants to do or reveal in this circumstance.
Prayer is the reconciling place. The stillness and simplicity of prayer returns us to the purity of our convictions. Prayer helps us grapple with the reality of our situation and then discern how to fit it into the eternal scope of what we know to be true about God. Asking God for things that are aligned with eternal purpose and not just self-serving our limited perspective is harder than we think. Jesus has a way of drilling down that, for most of us, feels uncomfortable to bear at first. His way, of course, is not interrogative, it is inviting. We see it in scripture at least three times with one simple, open ended question:
“What do you want me to do for you?”
In Luke 18:41, Matthew 20:32, and Mark 10:51, Jesus asks this question and upon receiving a clear, direct answer, restores sight to each requester. But the exchange he offers is more than 20/20 vision. When we attune ourselves to Jesus, get real and honest about what we want him to do, he gives us the ability to see.
Sight, in this case, may be vision to see a solution to a difficult problem. It may be hope despite harrowing circumstances. It may be perseverance to clear out a convoluted path. It may be strength to overcome what seems impossible. It may be opening our eyes to a perspective we have never seen before.
As the old hymn goes, “I was blind, but now I see.”
The difference between being blind and having vision is direct communion with Jesus, which we call prayer.
It is then, from this place of prayer, that we can begin to take actions and put change in motion. But if we begin with own self reliance, dismissing the power of prayer, then we risk putting things in motion that are confined to our own personal wisdom, which I am sorry to say, is no match for the eternal principalities that are at work in this world.
We do, in fact, need thoughts and prayers. We need these not because prayer changes God, but because prayer changes us. It changes us out of our isolated blindness and into the collective vision to see things and people as Jesus sees them. And judging from the collective state of things, we have a long way to go. We need to get busy on allowing the Holy Spirit to drill down for us what it is we are truly seeking, what is within our power to impact, what small things we can do ourselves to move the greater collective to true and lasting peace.
True and lasting peace will not come from [legislature, resources, money, leaders, etc, etc, etc.]
True and lasting peace will come from aligning our lives to the Prince of Peace himself…
In thoughts and prayers.
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