LIVING, LEARNING & LOVING during LENT
Lenten devotionals for March and April. We will focus on a different concept each day of the week: Sundays: Resting/Taking Sabbath Mondays: Fasting Tuesdays: Giving Wednesdays: Serving Thursdays: Praying Fridays: Studying/Learning Saturdays: Celebrating/Playing.
March 27 (Thursday – Praying)
- Scripture: Luke 11:9 — So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
- Reflection: Remember that prayer is a relational dialogue with God. The three forms of prayer include requests for help, expressions of awe and praise, and statements of gratitude.
When we pray, it is OK to ask for what we need. We can describe our hopes and aspirations for the best, most desirable outcome.
We are also asked to be partners in such prayerful conversations. We are required to be responsible, and to participate in all the ways we are able, to help facilitate desirable results. God gives us relationships and resources that may expedite outcomes.
The balance of our prayer requests come from understanding that God cannot promise to answer us by giving us exactly what we say we want. God will always listen. God will always reply in God’s own time and God’s own way. God cannot promise that we will escape suffering or hardship. God promises to be present with us through such experiences. This may also translate into God’s companionship as we are struggling through difficult circumstances, and experiencing journeys and outcomes that are not the ones for which we ask or pray. That doesn’t mean that God isn’t listening or responding, simply that what God deems possible — or necessary — is different than what we may have requested.
One matriarch of people in our faith community — Lou — always concluded her prayer by saying, “May your most Holy will be done.” Part of our discipline in prayer, after being honest and entrusting God with our requests, is to hand over the situation to God’s keeping. To accept whatever might happen, knowing God stands with us through all of it. - Spiritual Practice Prompt: Engage in a focused prayer time, writing out your prayer requests and journaling about how you perceive that God responds.
Song:
- Pray by ColdPlay ft. Little Simz, Burna Boy, Elyanna, TINI: https://youtu.be/knIbwsNGJyc?si=H9T9tOjoEHjW5MuI
- Hear Our Prayer by Hillsong UNITED: https://youtu.be/YC2UcdZrCEY?si=TMTCEIXgh9r0mIiC
And yet, I myself still ask.
I ask God for the provision of what I want, and for the extinction of what I fear. I do.
But … I no longer believe that if God is good, I will be provided what’s lovely and protected from what’s ugly. Nor do I believe that what happens by chance is a referendum on my goodness and deserving.
Even though the following violates our innate sense of justice, the fact is: sometimes good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. And when it does, we scan the scene for blame, because humans love pattern recognition. But this world we live in isn’t always governed by recognizable patterns that lend themselves to cause-and-effect conclusions. Sometimes, maybe even most times, there is not a satisfying answer to the question of “why” bad things happen, so we continue to just make shit up. We blame God or blame ourselves or blame others so that we can pretend it all could have been different – that we could have had control over the uncontrollable. Because the alternative is terrifying: shit just happens.
So even though I don’t believe in the gumball machine idea, that if I put a shiny quarter of prayer and righteousness into God’s vending machine that a shiny round gumball of “blessings” will drop into my hand, I still pray.
I pray because I have fears and longings and concerns and gratitudes and complaints that are best not left unexpressed. And so I hold these up to God, I repeat them in my mind and ponder them on my walks; I whisper them into my pillow, and press them into the soil; I write them on ribbons; I say them in the single, choppy syllables managed between sobs. And I believe that God somehow catches them and will not let a single one land unheld in God’s divine knowing. Not because God is good and I am good so I get what I ask for, but because God was, is, and will be – meaning that God is already present in the future I am fearing and already loving me through the grief of the bad thing happening, and already and always ready to comfort and sustain me. God abides all around me even in times of collapse, even in times of boredom, even in times of selfishness, even in times of effervescence when I forget to be grateful. I know this to be true even when I do not “feel” it. ― Nadia Bolz-Weber