Each morning (well, most mornings) I begin my day by reading from Common Prayer, not the Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church, but the devotional with a social justice bent by the dreadlock-wearin', Jesus-lovin' Shane Claiborne. Like many devotionals, Common Prayer is a mix of brief refrains repeated throughout the reading, psalms, songs, Scripture and an invitation to pray. Notably, it doesn't just say that -- pray, meaning, ask for whatever you want. It explicitly invites the reader to pray for others.
Selfishly, I have found this to be incredibly difficult, to pray only for the needs of others and not my own. So occasionally I'll sneak in my own requests here and there -- sometimes at the beginning of my devotions, sometimes at the end. This is especially true when the life of whoever I'm praying for is inextricably linked to my own life and behavior, like my wife, my daughters, my coworkers. For instance, my wife was recently diagnosed with a bulging disk low in her spine, and in the weeks that we've been waiting to figure out what's next, I've continually prayed for God to heal her (through divine intervention or through the God-given talents of a neurosurgeon) but also for God to grant me patience, humility and strength as I manage, solo, our household and family (clean, cook, mow, grocery shop, etc.). Yeah, maybe I'm cheating a little from what Common Prayer is asking me to do. But when I pray for things like patience, I really believe I am kinda praying for others, too, because when I get angry, impatient, grumpy, others suffer along with me.
Which leads me to this: our relationship with God is not a binary, either you're being faithful or you're not, kinda thing. In fact, I'm discovering that faith is at best a messy, inexact, often chaotic affair. Things are rarely clearcut. Cause and effect, so central to the process of scientific discovery, don't always follow one another in the Kingdom of God. A prayer for healing "wasted" on a man who proves to be insane may--because the act was witnessed by someone--result in a dozen people giving their lives to Jesus. Because you plant an apple seed in New Jersey, God's creation--via a complex ecosystem, wind currents and the migratory patterns of birds--may provide a hungry child in South America with fruit to eat and live another day. Pure Salvador Dali, baby. Loaves and fishes. Do I mean all this literally? Well, yeah, I guess I do. I believe God's love is a furnace that transforms our mediocrity and selfishness into pure gold, our sins rising like dross to the surface where they are skimmed off and thrown into the darkness.So faith isn't about believing right things, or never making mistakes. It's about knowing who you belong to, and returning to that source of life again and again. Admitting, along with the disciples, that for all the allure of this world, for all the come-ons and distractions, there is nowhere else to go but the Father's arms. Messy, broken and lost as we are.
The concluding prayer in Common Prayer this morning seems apt:
You hear our prayers whether they are full of thanksgiving or full of complaints. Your mercy is unending. Even in your discipline you restrain yourself in ways we cannot know. May our mumbled words of gratitude and our fleeting praises find crevices where they can grow within your presence, Lord of light and morning. Amen.
