For Sunday, July 28, 2013 – Luke 11:1-13
In the book Clinging, the Experience of Prayer, Emilie Griffin begins this way: “There is a moment between intending to pray and actually praying that is as dark and silent as any moment in our lives. It is the split second between thinking about prayer and really praying. For some of us, this split second may last for decades. It seems, then, that the greatest obstacle to prayer is the simple matter of beginning, the simple exertion of the will, the starting, the acting, the doing. How easy it is, and yet—between us and the possibility of prayer there seems to be a great gulf fixed: an abyss of our own making that separates us from God.”
When one of the disciples asks Jesus how to pray, it seems to be inspired by the fact that Jesus has been out actually praying. The disciple admits he is familiar with John the Baptist’s teaching about prayer, but seems not to have made a beginning. He still stands at the abyss, unable to pray, in that split second that can last for decades. I know that abyss, that broad span of silence between desiring and doing. How relieved I am to hear Jesus not chastise his friend, or embarrass him, but to say, confidently, as though we will be able to do it: “Here’s how.”
The outline for prayer that Jesus gives is simple: honor God, ask for God’s ways to come into being among us and for our daily needs to be met (which is how we know God’s ways are among us), forgive ourselves and others, and ask for the strength to resist the temptations that can tug us away from all of this. Simple, but never rote. Prayer is no magic potion, a dab of this and a pinch of that, accomplished in five easy steps. Prayer, Jesus says, is relationship, prayer is persistence, prayer is pestering God at midnight.
Pester God to forgive. Pester God to give us what we truly need. Pester God to show up in our lives in ways that help us to show up, too. Don’t just stand at the abyss and never make a beginning. Get up, go to the source, and keep on asking, keep on looking, keep on knocking, keep on.
