July
29, 2001
Luke 11:1-13
One day [Jesus] was praying in a certain place. When he finished,
one of his disciples said, "Master, teach us to pray just
as John taught his disciples."
So he said, "When you pray say,
'Father,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.'"
Then he said, "Imagine what would happen if you went to a
friend in the middle of the night and said, 'Friend, lend me three
loaves of bread. An old friend traveling through just showed up,
and I don't have a thing on hand.'
"The friend answers from his bed, 'Don't bother me. The door's
locked; my children are all down for the night; I can't get up
to give you anything.'
"But let me tell you, even if he won't get up because he's
a friend, if you stand your ground, knocking and waking all the
neighbors, he'll finally get up and get you whatever you need.
"Here's what I'm saying:
Ask and you'll get;
Seek and you'll find;
Knock and the door will open.
"Don't bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need.
This is not a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we're in. If your
little boy asks for a serving of fish, do you scare him with a
live snake on his plate? If your little girl asks for an egg,
do you trick her with a spider? As bad as you are, you wouldn't
think of such a thing -- you're at least decent to your own children.
And don't you think the Father who conceived you in love will
give the Holy Spirit when you ask him?"
<The Message >
=======
1.
The Spiritual Formation Bible reminds us of an insight
by Martin Luther --
"Frequently when I come to a certain part of 'Our Father'
or to a petition, I land in such rich thoughts that I leave behind
all set prayers. When such rich, good thoughts arrive, then one
should leave the other commandments aside and offer room to those
thoughts and listen in stillness and for all the world not put
up obstruction. For then the Holy Spirit . . . is preaching and
one word from [that] sermon is better than a thousand of our prayers.
I have often learned more from one such prayer than I could have
received from much reading and writing."
2.
Yes, we want to be taught. That is appropriate. However, we also
have this tendency to solidify anything we are taught into rules.
One of the greatest gifts we can receive is encouragement to learn
how to learn. Such a process knows when to say that new learning,
a re-learning needs to take place.
So it is with prayer. Too much set formal prayer, no matter if
Jesus is the teacher, leaves us diminished, unable to respond
to the promptings of the Spirit. Too much extemporaneous prayer
leaves us exhausted, unable to keep learning from the depths of
the tradition and the larger community.
Perhaps not unexpectedly, formal prayers can keep on giving as
we plumb one dimension after another and what seems like informal
prayers can begin to take on a regularity and pattern and structure
that just, just, just uses the same pat phrases and formulas.
Our work is working back-and-forth between these poles and learning
to appreciate the strengths and weakness of both.
3.
Here is a suggestion from Gerald May about prayer in his book
Simply Sane: The Spirituality of Mental Health
"If you do pray:
1. Pray
2. Do the best you can
3. Accept the whole situation
4. Watch with awe
"If you don't pray:
1. Do the best you can
2. Accept the whole situation
3. Watch with awe
"If you can't pray:
1. Do the best you can
2. Accept the whole situation
3. Watch with awe
4. Be still and listen
"If prayer happens, watch who's praying. Sometimes it seems
like you praying, and sometimes it doesn't. Listen to noisy prayer.
And listen to quiet prayer. And if there's no prayer at all, listen
to that.
. . . .
"We will just understand, with a little smile, that prayer
is happening in spite of us, no matter what."