The Placement of Reverence

Have you ever wondered what might help you lead a more joyous and meaningful life?

Plato once wrote that parents should not teach their children how to become rich—but how to become reverent. Try as I might, however, my nine-year-old son has not yet developed an appropriate sense of reverence. Ant hills are for kicking. Lizards are targets for a BB gun.                 

Adults, however, are not much better at being appropriately reverent than nine-year-old boys. Just yesterday I heard an adult speak pejoratively of a cobweb in her kitchen but reverently of the TV show, “Hell’s Kitchen.” Why is it that we often revere the fantastically farcical but shun the incredibly sublime? Maybe I’m crazy, but the sublimity and grace of a cobweb deserves more reverence than a caustic TV personality.

I have a friend who does not watch pro sports or other popular entertainment. My friend tells me that he can’t stand the lavish attention that is given to entertainers and athletes. When I asked him about his “stick-in the-mud” attitude, he, in turn, asked me if I thought pop culture icons deserved their hero-like status and huge salaries. I confessed that whether or not pop icons deserved their salaries is beyond my ability to determine. But the reverence that we heap upon cultural icons is not beyond my ability to critique. Our reverence for entertainers and athletes is misplaced and out of proportion to their value to society (consider the comparable amount of reverence that is given to teachers, nurses, and those who serve us in restaurants).

The word reverence comes from the Latin word, reverentia, which means “to respect greatly.” As I survey American pop culture, I find that we have a lot of reverence. But we often have reverence for the wrong things and wrong people. Perhaps that is one reason why meaning and joy are, according to polls I’ve read, in short supply. Misplaced reverence can create an existential void.   

According to the late theologian and physician, Albert Schweitzer, “By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world. By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive.” Maybe that’s why so many people I know do not seem deep and alive. Maybe that’s why our popular culture, with its vicarious living through sports heroes and reality TV, is largely shallow and depressive.

On the other hand, appropriately placed reverence puts us in touch with the holy of this world. And when we are in touch with the holy of this world, we are, I believe, in touch with The Being that creates the holy of this world. And to be in touch with The Being is, according to statistics, to offer some measure of meaning and joy.

So go ahead and stare at a cobweb in your kitchen. Stop staring at your TV. You might just find meaning and joy are not in such short supply.

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.