What-if prayer were like this?

“No running or jumping.”  I am prefacing this entry with those directions, which I’ve heard often (and said myself on occasions), because I’m stammering for words here at my keyboard and I can imagine quick-thinking others speed reading ahead of me, getting what I’m not saying.

Here’s my idea:  what if on my birthdays I were to re-pray the prayers of my life?  What if I were to bow my head over the dinner meal and list my ten year old worries in the hopeful entrusting way I did back then, the way I learned in Sunday School?  “God is good.  I’ve been selfish.  I shouldn’t have taken that.  I don’t want to be punished.  Please.  Don’t be angry with me.  Bless this food.  Amen.”  

Or, the prayer I ran upstairs with, in a rush to get to my bedroom and kneel at the side of my twin bed, the one where I asked God to take care of my dad who was in trouble.  I was scared he would die.  I begged God to take me instead, a less-significant loss.  We needed my dad.  The neighborhood needed my dad.  His work place needed my dad.  His brothers and sister, his Dutch “Ma” who had lost two other children, she needed my dad.  His stoic “Pa.”  And my sweet-faced, mischievous sister with her soft blonde curls, who, I thought, was his favorite, she needed him.  And, especially, my  mom.  I cried.  She would be heartbroken either way, but I’d have to give her up to him, for him.  That’s the painful prayer that taught me about the blessed relief of being spared.  

Or the let-me-slip-unnoticed-past-the-bully-crossing-guard-today elementary school prayer I prayed as I climbed Havana Street hill with heavy steps not entirely due to my clunky boots.   

What if I shook a little today, like I did when I made confession of faith as a sixteen year old girl standing in the front pew of an impressive church in the presence of a large number of powerfully faithful adults and none less than God’s own self?  What if I said here today, not what I recited aloud then, but what whispered under my breath at that moment?  “Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief.  I believe in you Father God, but I’m not so sure I’m as close to Jesus as I should be.  I really hope it’s OK to profess publicly a so-far/so-good faith.  I promise to keep working on it.  To be a learner.”   

Or my absolutely stupid prayers, for our team to win just this once, for him to be at his locker when I walk past, for enough time to make it home before curfew.

Do people in sunshiny states pray while driving?  Nothing fair-weather-friendly about the prayers I’ve prayed with my hands gripping the steering wheel during a blizzard, instead of politely folded in peaceful rest.  I remember those desperate prayers followed by my weak, breaking voice singing “Lead me gently home, Father.  Lead me gently home, Father.  Lest I fall upon the wayside.  Lead me gently home.”  “Fall” rises to a wailing high note in that refrain.  I think it was composed that way on purpose.  I’ve sung it by heart.  I do even when I'm not on the road.  

I remember unbelievable prayer situations.  Timing that is too coincidental to be coincidental.  Surgeons’ untiring and unerring skill.  The sound of the garage door opening, finally.  Decisions that were irreversible, and yet, somehow survivable.  A time when I just knew.    

I have a big file of prayers.  
Sometimes I think, what if, instead of a manual on how-to-pray, some church study group members publicly swapped old, used prayers?  What if our kids overheard us?  What if they heard us say that’s how this works?  

Here’s where I am guessing I’ll catch up with objections or corrections.  Not closeted enough, I suppose.  Yet, on occasion doesn’t Jesus himself pray with eaves droppers in mind?  He even says that right out loud. (John 11:42).   And when asked how to pray, he doesn’t explain different styles or outline parts.  He gives an example. “When you pray, say: Our Father…”  (Luke 11:2).  Maybe we hesitate because putting our prayers “out there” seems radical, attention-seeking, embarrassing, or needy.  Yet, when our claims of God’s help are disconnected from pulse, muscle, skin, and bone, how are our beliefs anything more than lofty ideas, debatable, or selectively dismissible as opinions or theories?

And some will take and run with this next critique, I’m afraid.  Once when a friend dropped off a canning jar full of get-well-from-cancer-soup, she told my husband who met her at the door that she was praying for me although she knew my prayer practices were unusual.  She was alluding to my lack of warriors.  Caring prayers welcome, of course, but I don’t honestly get the quota system.  I didn’t have time then to introduce myself to a new squadron and I didn’t want to put words into months that didn’t come from their hearts.  I have a few friends on speed dial.  They also have my number.  We keep confidential files on each other’s concerns, crumpled pages with lots of margin notes including multiple exclamation points alongside of God’s answers.  And then there’s a church (or two) who have chatted me up enough on my good days to get to know me inside and out and who legitimately want to hold me up as well as hold me close and hold me together.  

If you’re nodding at this point, I’m afraid you might be reading this over God’s shoulder.  Prayer is meeting up.  One of us —God or I—always seems to be waiting for the other.  I’ve muttered to God as I waited in miserable places and murmured with hushed awe in quiet, beautiful places.  But I don’t appreciate unsolicited breezy explanations of where God’s been or what God’s doing.  I can’t hear through that well-intentioned, cheery noise.  It doesn't take away the pain.  Or allow me to discover marvels myself.   

So, cautioning me to remain cautious and reserved, or to go all-out public, or to take consolation in God’s great reputation, that flies like a banner ahead of him — those weary me.  I simply want to pray and remember when and why.    

Maybe my friend spoke truth.  
Maybe my praying practice is unusual.
But I don’t think so. 

Prayer is God’s gift.  
Recalling our talks and remembering is my thank you card.  

SH

Thoroughly

Lately I've been thoroughly washing my hands which leads to washing surfaces which leads to...well, in my case, to sorting and deleting computer files. I know. The connection isn't obvious, but I guess COVID-cleaning and compulsive-cleaning aren't that far apart in my brain's alphabetical filing system. While sorting computer files, I came across this sermon that I'd written in 2011. It begins with an ordinary trip to the store. Maybe nostalgia for that old normal drew me in. Or maybe this is the way normal was supposed to look all along? What do you think? Here's my retro word on the Word of God. 

On Deuteronomy 30:9-14; Luke 10:25-37

'These passages offer us so much to talk about; how to pull it all together?'  Those were my thoughts as I was finishing this sermon yesterday. So when I saw the orange light flashing on my printer and since I didn’t have any more paper to add to the tray, I decided to go to Staples. I also stopped at Target, despite the fact that I knew John would be home soon and we hadn’t eaten supper yet. Wasting time, my mother would have said. I was lecturing myself with her words so I only stayed long enough to pick up one item and hurried to the Express Lane. The cart ahead of me looked suspiciously like it held more than 20 items, but I told myself that I should be patient with others and so I passed the time by concentrating on not sighing out loud and trying not to look as impatient as I felt. And not blaming the person ahead of me for making me late. I couldn’t help but notice, though, that the line started getting longer behind me as well as in the next lane. Meanwhile my clerk was very carefully folding about a zillion pieces of children’s clothing. I sighed before I remembered not to, but – thank heavens - not obviously enough to attract attention to myself. 

     Then the worst case scenario happened in the next aisle. You know what that is, don’t you? A baby started to cry, one of those really wound-up cries. I glanced over, but the mother was answering questions thrown at her by two girls, about this height, 8 or 10 years old, I suspect. They were whining because she was refusing to buy candy. No one was attending to the baby in the cart. I thought, 'why doesn’t that mother pick up that child?'  I thought, 'why doesn’t that mother ask one of those perfectly healthy, strong, young girls to pick up that child, or to rock his car seat gently, or give him his pacifier?'  The mother was getting cranky with the girls; they both gave her sullen looks. The baby cried harder. Everyone was looking at them...even my clerk who obviously should have been paying attention to what she was doing because she had to check the screen a second time to see if she had accounted for everything before ringing up a total. Not much longer, I told myself. But now the clerk was talking with the woman ahead of me about opening a charge account. I re-positioned my single item on the conveyor belt and shifted my weight from one leg to the other. 

And then a funny thing happened. A song started playing in my mind. 'Lullaby and good night, dah, da, dah, da, da da da….' Oh, I know that must have been a very, very old reflex reaction. I haven’t sung a lullaby to a baby in many years. But there it was, loud and clear in my brain. And also in my brain— because of all the times I had read them this week, because of all the information about them that I had stuffed into my head— also in my brain were today's verses from the gospel of Luke, especially, "Which of these do you think was a neighbor?" 

         I was startled. I looked around. Everyone was uncomfortable. Many were sighing and shifting their weight. No doubt, several were thinking judgmental thoughts about this hassled mother and her three children. It was written all over their faces. All over my face, I thought. But I was also still thinking, 'Lullaby and good night…' so I started singing out loud right there in the Express Lane at Target. 

         I am not the sort of person who has ever even pretended to love musicals. Frankly, I have always thought it was pretty hokey that in the middle of the plot, just when everything was getting all complicated and a good solution was needed, someone would pick that moment to burst out in song. But secretly, I guess, I also thought that if, I say IF, that ever were to occur in real life, when one person burst out in song, others would be sure to chime in. Especially when someone was singing a song that everyone knows by heart, let’s say, something as familiar as “Lullaby and good night…”  But, that wasn't the case.  Maybe that explains why “Ooooooklahoma” isn’t entitled “Minnnnnnesota,” you think? 

         By now, my item was checked out and since I had started something by singing, I figured I might as well go all the way. So, still singing, I stepped to the side of the cart that held a very distressed little baby boy only a few months old, and when the mother looked up at me a little confused, I stopped to  ask, “Would you mind if I stand here and rock the baby carrier while you finish?” Do you know what relief looks like? As I rocked the baby’s car seat, I caught the eye of one of the older girls, so I said, “He’s having a hard night.” She replied, sarcastically, “He’s having a hard summer. See, he scratched me.” She showed me two Band-Aids on her arm. The other girl added timidly, “He really likes his Binky.”  I saw the pacifier lying where it had fallen down on his blanket and tested that a moment on his lips. It popped in place almost instantly and there was silence, except for a middle-aged woman still humming. The mother thanked me, really thanked me.  The baby was quiet, and I slipped away while she was gathering up her bags.

         I have helped others before, as you have. But this time, was different because it would have been far less embarrassing to mind my own business. This time I wasn’t completely sure how what I offered might be received before I offered it. To be sure, this time was only a small thing, a baby in the supermarket, d’rein, as the French say when someone thanks them -- nothing. This time, as small as it was, was far less safe than other times I’d offered to help in the past. And this time I was also in a hurry to get home. You see, I had to finish a sermon about the Good Samaritan. And, I had been studying God’s word which says, what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach…no, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.

         That’s the illustration, here’s the sermon:  did you happen to notice in the text that Jesus never called the Samaritan “Good”? Neither does he call the priest and the Levite, “Bad.” They all could justify NOT stopping, if they had wanted to, whether for legal, religious, or cultural reasons, let alone, just being late. But the end of the matter is that the first two simply did not act in a neighborly way. They chose to respond with their heads— their better judgment— not with compassionate hearts. 

        We often have compassion for ourselves. We harbor hurt feelings and want others to love and accept us. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity, (v. 33). A heart like that applies the same awareness to the other person’s situation. When we study this passage, we often analyze the different ethnicity and job descriptions of these passersby, but the only difference that Jesus takes into account is their ability or inability to "be moved with pity".

How do we look at the world?  Have I received from my Lord a compassion that overrides logic, ego, and inconvenience?  The right question for us is not "Who is my neighbor?", but rather "How will I be a neighbor?"

 

Photo by Eduardo Soares on Unsplash