Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Luke 11:1-4


Dear Theophilus,
I am grateful to be able to say that these letters have been a gift—they have set my heart thinking about more important things than ever before.  I have questioned many of the assumptions upon which I have based my life, and I have examined the ways I treat others, particularly those outside my close circle of companions.  Even if I reach the end and have no idea what to make of Jesus and his teachings, I can say with gratitude that I strive to be a better person now, and while Jesus seems to desire more than just converted actions, he has had that effect on this man.
You note how filled your life is with distraction toward the end of your letter, and we move from a discussion on busy-ness into one focused on prayer, an area in which I certainly have no expertise.  I spend little time praying and am not even sure how best one should define prayer.  I suppose it is talking to God, but I doubt that I would hear much of a response if I invested my time and energy in such a practice.  The thought of prayer has always seemed a bit strange—it’s like a conversation in which one half says nothing.  That leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation, in my opinion, if we’re just supposed to guess what God’s replies to our queries would be.  Perhaps it is more nuanced than that, but I just can’t shake the feeling that prayer is like talking to one’s self, only with the notion that someone who can’t be seen or heard is listening.  Excuse my skepticism and my attack on the practice, Theophilus, but I can’t help but wonder what prayer accomplishes.   Perhaps by the end of this particular exploration I’ll have reached a different place.
Once, after Jesus had finished his prayers, his disciples approached him with a question, a request—they wanted Jesus to teach them to pray, just as John taught his disciples how to pray.  They wanted to know how to talk to God.  May they had similar feelings to the ones I hold—that prayer felt silly, felt ineffective, and they wanted to know how to do it properly. 
In response, Jesus gives them the following:
Lord God, Father in Heaven, may your name be holy, and may we speak it in reverence, in awe
May your Kingdom come, the one that you have promised, to which our souls anticipate with achy fervor,
Feed us, Lord, each day, by your generous hand,
And forgive our transgressions, our sins, our shortcomings, as we ourselves seek to forgive those who trespass against us.
Lord, lead us not into the dark places where trials and temptations lurk.
It’s a beautiful model for prayer, Theophilus.  It’s about praising God, it’s about looking forward to his reign here on earth, and also addresses the present day.  The prayer focuses on depending on God daily, about asking for forgiveness as well as the strength and wisdom to forgive others, and it also touches on asking God to make our path a little easier by keeping temptation at bay.  I don’t know if Jesus intends for us to pray this exact prayer or simply model prayers upon it, but it’s a structure that could hold almost all of one’s needs in prayer. 
Prayer is a foreign landscape to me.  I hope you can shed some light on this topic for this man, an outsider peering in trying to understand just what prayer is.  It is an odd practice, yet one that seems so central to the life of Jesus and the disciples. 
Sincerely,
Luke

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