This Week

Twenty years ago my journals consisted of reams and reams of longing and lust – boredom, restlessness, unfulfilled dreams, broken promises, haunting nightmares, books I wanted to write, money I wanted to make, friendships that kept me on edge, men I wanted to love me. Twenty years later I am absorbed with about pretty much the same things (except it’s only one man, my husband, whom I’m trying to help learn how to love me). Admittedly, I’m not always proud of my prayers and private conversations with God. Nonetheless I am grateful to be able to look back over some of the longest prayers imaginable. They are my stutters before the holy. I shudder to think of my journals falling into the wrong hands –say, someone who might mistake them for truth. Still, I’ve learned some things from this long affair with written prayers. For one thing, sometimes you have to pray the prayers you can until you can pray the prayer you want. Second, prayer is not so much learning to write or talk to someone or some presence outside yourself as becoming mindful of a conversation already taking place deep inside. ----Renita Weems, Listening for God

Jesus was praying in a certain place,
and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him,
"Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples."
Jesus said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial."
And Jesus said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to
him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread;
for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.'
And he answers from within, 'Do not bother me;
the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed;
I cannot get up and give you anything.'
I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he
is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him
whatever he needs.
"So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will
find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds,
and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a
snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion?
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask
him!" ----Luke 11:1-13

Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement.

Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.

----Mohandas K. Gandhi

Being able to say amen implies being able to trust and be confident and certain that everything is in the hands of [God.] [God] has already conquered mistrust and fear, despite everything. The Lord’s Prayer has encompassed the whole path of humanity in its drive toward heaven and its rootage in the earth. One finds in it the motif of light and the motif of darkness. And to all of it we say "Yes, so be it!" And we can say yes and amen to the threat of evil, to the promptings of temptation, to the insults we receive, and to the onerous quest for bread, only if we retain our certainty that God is our [God], that we are consecrated to [the divine] holy name, that we are confident that [God’s reign] will come, and that we are sure [God’s] will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

----Leonard Boff, The Lord’s Prayer: The Prayer of Integral Liberation

• What was Jesus trying to teach about prayer in this passage?
• How have you experienced the persistence of prayer? Does it work?
• How have you seen prayer work alongside the action Gandhi is talking about?
• Is there a method of prayer that works best for you, or does it change from time to time?
• Does God respond? Do we have to trust that when we pray?