Church, scripture, suffering, and prayer -- Pt. 4 of 4

PRAYER

In the meantime (while we are here), prayer is not meant to be magic, and it doesn’t manipulate God to make him do what we want, no matter how good or faithful we are. It's conversation, and—like talking with friends—it can often help get us through tough times. I think it’s okay to ask God to intervene, and even to complain to God; that’s just being honest, and he has asked for honesty. However, even Jesus got turned down, (Matthew 26:39) and more mature prayer—like any conversation—isn’t all about me, and what I want from you or from God. Our best friends do help us out, when they can, but what we value most is that our very best friends weather the storms of life with us, and we with them! Prayer is not just a help-line or order catalog.

Prayer is the conversation between the Creator and his beloved.

On the other hand, I also think it’s also okay to ask for what we want because we are a part of the conversation, and God may answer in surprising and deeper ways: through people or other things. What if people had never had the faith or desperation to ask Jesus for his help? However, even when they did ask, his help usually went beyond their requests. They asked for healing in their bodies. Jesus usually went beyond physical or surface healing, and ended up giving them a relationship with God.

We held a healing service for a man who eventually died from his cancer. Before he died, he said that after the service he felt completely “healed” and "whole"—not because the cancer was gone, it wasn’t. But his relationship with God and the world was healed; he was still dying, but he was able to accept it with a sense of peace, knowing that God didn’t cause it, but trusting that God would walk with him through it all the way to "the other side.”

Jesus may have raised Lazarus from the dead (pointing to a deeper truth about God's re-creative power), but eventually Lazarus died again. That suggests that miracles are never meant to be an end in themselves, but only important signs of hope for something bigger than us, beyond our words or knowledge. It suggests that unfairness can be reversed, and that both healed and unhealed people will be permanently restored in the here-after ...just not yet.

There are miracles for specific times or reasons. However, too much emphasis and faith in the miracles themselves misses the point. Instead of having an unconditional relationship with God, we are tempted to love him for the stuff he might give us, or distrust him for whatever he doesn’t give us.

To sum it up, life and how we live it is all one long prayer, anyway. It is a response to God. Ignoring him, saying nothing directly to him, is a message. Caring for the people and critters in our lives, taking care of the earth and water, or not, is talking to the Creator, with more than words. We might as well accept that, and welcome his presence, both with words and also comfortable silence. And he is talking to us, telling us many things through all the people, critters, creation, books, blogs, etc.

Ultimately, I think he's telling us that he loves us, and that there is more, much more, to life and creation, and to the dimensions that are yet to be discovered, whether on this side or the next.

We are all going to be surprised... I believe in a good way.