The Connect4 class at First Baptist Memphis is using Richard Foster's book, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, as our Sunday School literature. The book is a study of classic spiritual disciplines and Foster lists twelve of them. We discussed prayer this week.
I should start with a confession: prayer is not something with which I am entirely comfortable. I don't understand it. I don't understand what it is or how it works or how to do it, but I certainly understand why it is so important for most people. In fact, it would be just as important for me, I'm sure, if I could only figure out what the hell it is. But I just don't "get" prayer, a confession to which Greer replied with both grace and jest (a rare combination): "That's okay, we'll pray for you!"
Don't get me wrong; I can write and deliver a pretty good prayer. I understand the "outs" of prayer, but not so much the "ins." I've studied theology and understand how to make the words of prayer consistent with the thoughts of our best theologians. I've also heard enough good prayers to know how to construct a prayer and what to say. And I've heard enough bad prayers to know what not to say.
Now, I should also add that I have my own definition of prayer (in the spirit of Keith Green's "Make My Life A Prayer To You" or Joy Electric's cover) and I do that just fine. I consider my re-definition of the word an attempt to re-claim it, the way feminists and African-Americans and others have re-claimed certain words. Foster actually has a book called Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home that covers 21 different types of prayer and I'm okay with almost all of them.
The problem with this, however, is that I don't always feel that I am speaking the same language as other Christians. For example, most people understand prayer as some kind of communication with God. At its most basic, this means asking God for stuff. But it also includes a quiet and stillness that listens. And I am not sure what to do with any of this.
I'm not comfortable asking God for stuff because I'm not comfortable with a God from whom I can ask for stuff. Such an understanding of God, although quite biblical, makes God like a person, complete with agency and being (or Being). But I'm not quite sure God is really like that, heretical though I may be.
The bigger problem for me is that I'm really not comfortable placing thinking that God answers (or doesn't answer) prayer. I'm uncomfortable with a God who has the power to cure Cancer and AIDS and Alzeihmer's...but doesn't. I'm uncomfortable with a God who has the ability to stop the destruction that is Haiti or Katrina or 9/11...but doesn't.
I'm just not okay with God saying, "No, I think it is better that Vicki suffer and die of cancer" or "You know, it's okay that all those folks in Haiti, who were already suffereing from poverty, are dying."
That's just not the kind of God I want anything to do with.
But that's also the reason I'm not comfortable with prayer, as it is most commonly defined.
Still I am greatful to be a part of a people of prayer, those for whom my problems aren't problems. I'm also glad to be a part of a group who responded to my confession that I don't "get" prayer with: "That's okay, we'll prayer for you!"
And, for them, I say: "Thanks be to God!"
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