One week ago, we spoke of prayers of confession and how our relationship with God will grow and flourish when we see such praying expansively and hopefully. It’s more than admitting intentional violations. What didn’t we intend that hurt God or others? What damage are we unaware of still? We ask God to shine a flashlight into the dark corners of our souls: “Search me, O God, and see if there is anything wayward in me” (Psalm 139:24). The dream, and the reality, is healing, clearing the air, restoring relationship.
Rabbi Heschel: “Prayer is a way to master what is inferior in us, to discern between the signal and the trivial, between the vital and the futile.” What is inferior – not to others, but to the true image of God in me? What is trivial and futile that occupies my mind and energy? Open up with God about such things and ask to become more like Christ. Prayer is “to let God’s will prevail in our affairs” (Heschel).
We also confess sin that’s not properly ours. We are enmeshed and live in a world that makes your head spin, so much that’s insidious, harmful, offensive, and tawdry. As a member of the human race, we offer all that up to God, asking for mercy and healing, knowing that God’s heart is broken too. We name systemic evils, governments or corporate nonsense or cultural insanities that are unholy and costly. God bears all this with us. And our only hope for such an enormity of trouble is… of course, God.
As we pray to be holy, and nobler, we make our commitments, our pledges to God to be different, and to let God’s Spirit have its way in transforming us. Prayer is always aspirational. I de-center me and realize God’s already in the center. Mine is to do God’s bidding. I sign on for God’s endeavors. Prayer refuses to settle for less.
Hard to believe that back in the 1990’s, I had a monthly op-ed in The Charlotte Observer. They printed – in the newspaper! when most people had one delivered, and then read it! – my columns on topics like “Is there a God?” or “What about other religions?” or “Why do bad things happen?” The world has changed, and so such columns are no more in the newspapers. One of my favorites I wrote was “Does prayer work?” I reported on a handful of stories I know, and a few studies I’d read indicating prayer might just work. I know thousands more stories where lovely, holy people prayed in earnest with zero results – unless you count giving up on God.
Asking if prayer works is like measuring your marriage by how frequently your spouse does your bidding. C.S. Lewis was wise: “The very question ‘Does prayer work?’ puts us in the wrong frame of mind. ‘Work’: as if it were magic or a machine. Prayer is either sheer illusion or a personal contact with the Person of God. Prayer, in the sense of asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine. In prayer, God shows Himself to us. That He answers prayers is a corollary – not the most important one – from that revelation. What He does is learned from who He is.”
Prayer does work, though. Do prayers for forgiveness work? Beyond the slightest doubt. Prayers to let God prevail in my affairs work. When I pray, and the more I pray, things change – in me, and around me as I am made more grateful, generous, and gentle. I am closer to God and what God cares about in the world. I do more for and with God. And sometimes, when we least expect it and in surprising ways, after we’ve spoken with God about a concern, mysteriously unexpected good happens. And we simply express the same love for God we had before it happened, and if it had not happened.