Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Prayer....
The last little while prayer has been on my mind. I think prayer is very interesting. I think for the most part I see as a way to communicate with God. I just wonder if that is all and does this communication have any effect on the world. I believe it can effect our own life, but does it effect God acting in the world. I think my life says not in a direct relationship kind of way. Sometimes when I pray things happen sometimes they don't. Right now I struggle with this you pray this will happen mentality. I do believe prayer gives me comfort and peace. Every night i pray, actually i find it hard to fall asleep without praying. Often i am restless without praying. I have experienced the effect too often to say it has no effect on this world, but to say it has a direct effect is hard. I think prayer is a mystery. I don't really understand how prayer works, but it does maybe just not in the way we think it does.......
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Yeah, figuring out the whole prayer thing is hard. If God knows everything, and is unchangeable, and knows the future, then why pray? Do we really think we will change God?
The flipside of it is that if we just pray to make ourselves feel better, is that really the biblical intention of prayer?
I think about Abraham bartering with God over Sodom and Gomorrah. Or the command that if someone is sick they are to be brought to the elders, who will lay hands on them, and the person will get well. (An infant in my church just had a tumor disappear in his head after the elders prayed over him). Why would James have written that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective? Is it just powerful and effective in making US feel better?
It doesn't seem logical that prayer somehow changes God. And yet throughout Scripture, God responds to prayer. In Ezekiel God talks about wishing someone would "stand in the gap" but nobody did and so he was going to have to bring judgment. It seems like God is waiting on us to make a move, and that He responds to us when we do.
I think theology would say that God is unchangeable, and yet the Biblical narrative seems to show God continually responding to humans, and sometimes even changing his mind. (Of course some theologians will tell you that God is not changing his mind, but if you would just read the text as you would any other, it would seem that this is exactly what is happening.)
I think your post describes the struggle well. It's complicated.
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