WHY WE PRAY (OR WHY WE DON'T)

Lately I haven't been praying as often.  Usually my mind is flooded with prayer.  The least thing.  I don't understand my daughter:  "Help me God."  I'm standing at the waters' edge at sunset, heels sinking with the tide's gentle outflow:  "Thank you Lord."  The Ukrainians are dying:  "Save them Lord."  "The test came back normal:  "Thank you God."  

 

But lately not so much.  So, it seems, instead of actually praying, I've been thinking about prayer.  I don't know if others do this. 

The first thought is, why do we pray? To be closer to God surely.  To claim God as our center.  To admit that we are not alone and don't want to be.  To lay our very selves before the one who made us and whom we know will be there no matter how deep we sink.  To prostrate ourselves and be lifted.  To seek respite.  To give our burdens away.  To say, "Help me please."  That's on a bad day. 

On a good day we pray to give thanks.  On those days we worship with joy and sing God's praise.  We pray because we are grateful for every season, every blossom and seed, every lizard and spider and chipmunk.  We are grateful that our children are better, our lives have been spared, the floods have receded.  We give thanks for our best self, the self that cares for others, that loves with abandon, that lies on our back and feels the rain. 

We can pray to feel better, or we can pray to live better with how we're feeling.  Doing the latter often results in the former. We learned as children not to set an agenda for God.  After all, the words of the Lord's Prayer are "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done," not ours.  Hopefully we use prayer to be more open, receptive and present to God and not to tangle with our emotional life, our history, and the thoughts in our mind. 

Prayer is not a clever way to be happier, that we know.  Although turning over the unsolvable on earth to God--really letting it go--does help our stress and anxiety and maybe even depression.  

 

It's been said that a lack of prayer means a lack of faith and a lack of trust in God's word.  I actually read that.  Written by someone highly judgmental, no doubt.  That mind-set is easy to run into.  The same writer said that we pray to demonstrate our faith in God.  Demonstrate to whom would be my question.  I can't say that ever in my life have I prayed to "demonstrate" anything.  I pray out of need, gratitude and thanksgiving, knowing that not everything can be fixed, not world events and certainly not every private unpleasant experience.

I also read that prayers un-prayed will be prayers unanswered, but that too is not true.  God answers many prayers that I am too absent (or tired or unknowledgeable or devastated . . .) to pray.  I bet for each of us.

 

I'm sure that prayer will come easily again.  Sometimes something happens that destabilizes us for some reason and we need a re-set.  I bet God will answer a prayer that I don't even know how to phrase.  Sometimes that is my prayer:  You ask and You answer; I will accept.  Thank you Lord.  AMEN