Prayer

Martin Luther said prayer should resemble a dog’s appetite. As Luther tells it, he was watching his dog who had a piece of meat. Luther said, “If I could only pray the way this dog watches meat. All his thoughts are focused on the piece of meat. Other than the meat, he has no thought.”                                                                     

I will leave it to you to decide whether or not this is a helpful image for the life of prayer. Myself, I have found another, but complimentary, image.                       

I remember watching a beggar in Damascus, Syria. The woman, before shopkeepers shoed her away, kept asking everyone in our travel group for help; she kept seeking assistance; she persisted in knocking on the door of our hearts. And, in the end, someone in the group bought her food.                                                     

The image of a persistent beggar is a good image for the prayer life. To become a beggar before God admits the reality of the human condition. We are frail creatures—all of us in need. To stand as a beggar before God is an act of faith. We beg for what we need, trusting in God to act on our behalf.                           
But to approach God like a beggar does not mean that all of our prayers will be answered. After all, God is not Santa Claus or a cosmic bellboy. And we forget that, on occasion, God may simply say “No” to our prayers, just as we might say no to a beggar on the street. But in all of our asking, seeking, and knocking, God has our best interest at heart. God is our heavenly, loving parent.                                    
But let’s be honest: most of us do not have a great prayer life. We are not the best at asking, seeking, and knocking. And we probably do less begging from God and more bargaining. Our prayer lives are probably not all they could be.            

When we pray, our minds wander—we struggle to focus on God like a dog focuses upon meat. If our cells phone rings or a text comes through we have a short debate with ourselves about whether we should check the message. If we’re praying with other people, we may wonder silently to ourselves, “I wonder how I sound to these people?”                                                            

Prayer is, of course, personal, though it is not entirely private. Prayer must be discovered and understood on our own terms. People can help us with prayer. People can encourage us to pray. People can pray for us and with us.                                    

But, ultimately, prayer is a personal practice. The way we speak to God, the way we seek God’s will, the way we persevere with God comes down to who we are—and who we want to be.  Just as we all have different ways of relating with family and friends, so all of us have different ways of relating to God.                                             

I don’t know about you, but the older I become the more I look back over my life and see a creative power at work. Looking back I discover that this power, God, provided when I asked, provided when I searched, and answered when I knocked. And I have discovered that when God seemed not to provide—well, God was providing in a different, more mysterious way.