Persistence in prayer

Our lesson from 2 Timothy says, "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful . . .."   Now our lesson from Jeremiah and the Psalm are a part of the sacred writings that Paul was talking about; but the gospels and letters had not been canonized at the time.  Paul says that all scripture is inspired by God and is useful… useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training… And the goal is clearly stated, -- so that everyone who belongs to God may be equipped for every good work.  The problem is figuring out what the good work is that we are to be equipped for.  That's one of the purposes of prayer.

What is life all about?  What are we all about as Christians?  We should be about loving Christ, God, and our neighbor.  About living our life to the best of our ability – about keeping Christ as the focus – the lens through which we see the world.  We are to live out the Christian principles in our everyday lives.

We obviously can’t all do and be the same thing.  We have our different paths – we can’t all be teachers, or cooks, or lawyers, or policemen or farmers or doctors…  We need all these things and more in today’s world.  Individually we can’t be all things to all people, but we can keep Christ at the center of our lives so that we can reach out where we find need; so that we can offer hope (or at least God's presence) in situations that seem hopeless.

Our gospel story encourages us to pray always and to not lose heart - Luke states that is the purpose of this parable.  If at first we don't get what we want, pray and pray again.  But I'm not sure that this is always a good concept to hang on to, because it can so easily make us believe that we can manipulate God.  And what happens if God doesn't answer in the affirmative?  God will listen to our cry - but God sees an overall picture that we don't see, and sometimes the answer to our petition is "no."

(I'm going to insert a personal note here, my personal philosophy about prayer is that when anything happens, you pray first - always pray first - then get busy doing the things that need to be done.  And during periods of waiting, or when you don't know what to pray for - or are afraid to pray for what you want, if you have a string of prayer beads to hang on to, then you can hang on for dear life and trust God to do the rest.)

In our gospel story, even though we want to identify with the persistent widow – the truth is that more often we resemble the judge – the judge who does not see the widow, has no regard for her – she doesn’t even come up on his radar screen, until she badgers him.  We generally view God as judge and ourselves as the poor widow who is in need of justice - but maybe not.  One preacher, Bruce McLeod from the United Church of Canada, contends that we are the judge and God is the widow…

Now that’s a reversal from the normal concept.  He contends that when we view ourselves as the widow and God as the judge, then God can only be seen as needing to be worn down when we assume to know how our prayers should be answered.  Or we view God’s reluctance to do what we want as an obstacle to be overcome.

If we reverse that and view ourselves as the one who pays no attention to the widow – be that God in heaven, or God in the person beside us, then maybe we can get a new perspective on this story.  There are times when I can get so wrapped up in what I am doing that I forget to notice things right before my eyes that need my attention – and maybe I neglect to notice what God is placing right in front of me.  And if we view God as the widow who keeps coming to us, to get our attention, then we probably have a closer idea of what is actually going on in us.

We are the ones who need to be constantly reminded, who need to be brought back into focus of what is important in life.  His great love and persistence can indeed wear us down – for only divine love is capable of that much persistence.

Seen this way, maybe prayer is not about getting God to do what we want him to do, but more about being present to God; more about listening to God than speaking to him; more about learning what God wants in our lives and in today’s world.

One of the things we are doing on Wednesday evening is practicing listening to God.  We listen to a small part of God’s word, and then we try to be still and let God be god in us.  Prayer should always be a two-way street – telling God what’s on our hearts and our minds, but then listening to what God is telling us to do about it.

Faith has its work to do in fervent prayer. A part of the Christian obligation is to hold the world in  prayer, or at least some hurting or bruised part of it.  We pray for peace in Jerusalem, but we don’t tell God how to accomplish it.  When we pray for healing in our friend, maybe we shouldn't try to tell God how to do it.  Whether we are the judge or the widow, the result is the same, we meet God continually in prayer.

One example might be... When we moved to Houston, we needed cat food, but just didn’t have time to stop at the store.  In the mail that day we found a package of cat food from Kroger’s, – the same brand we buy – a God send that tied us over until we had time to go shopping.

A friend of mine wrote a setting for a song called, “Faith begins by letting go…” - - -   Faith begins by letting go - letting go of control and allowing God to be God in our life - - - and to allow Him to break through our resistance – with his persistence. Amen.