Wednesday, October 24, 2007 at 2:02am
Hope for the spiritually undisciplined
Column: New Houses from Old Bricks
Last week I asked an adult class at my church their thoughts on "spiritual disciplines." We brainstormed for a while and came up with an extensive list of Christian practices: prayer, Scripture study, meditation, hospitality, singing, serving one's neighbor, tithing. When I asked with which practices they felt most comfortable, the room was silent. Like myself and most busy people I know, spiritual discipline is a growth area — especially in prayer.
While I'm sure there are proficient pray-ers out there somewhere, I've never found anyone who would claim that title. Most people I know say they'd like to learn how to pray "better." Sometimes it's the practice we struggle with: What do I do? How do I concentrate? What posture should I use? But even more often, the challenge is remembering and finding time to do it — the discipline.
By coincidence, the following Sunday we heard Luke 18:1-8, the parable of the persistent widow. Presumably, she had been cheated by someone (as the vulnerable too often are), and she went to a judge to ask for justice. He couldn't have cared less about her complaint and sent her away, but she was so persistent that he finally gave in, heard her case, and granted justice. The moral of the story for Jesus' disciples is "their need to pray always and not to lose heart" (Luke 18:1).
Hopeful, disciplined persistence is not usually our strong point as human beings; we much prefer instant gratification. We want to see results quickly, so persistence and losing heart go hand in hand. This is often true in the spiritual life, which rarely asks us to do big things but always asks us to do little things over and over, such as praying, worshiping, offering our money and our time, and (at my church, anyway) bringing one more dish to one more potluck.
The spiritual life invites us to lifelong discipline, one day or one prayer at a time. We can't just do it once, or even 10 times, and wonder why it didn't "work." But in spiritual disciplines without instant gratification, we soon get tired of knocking on God's door. "Does God need me to bang the door down?!"
Jesus says this story is about our need to pray always, not God's need to be prayed to. Theologian Frederick Buechner puts it like this in his book "Wishful Thinking": "According to Jesus, by far the most important thing about praying is to keep at it. ... Be importunate, Jesus says — not, one assumes, because you have to beat a path to God's door before he'll open it, but because until you beat the path maybe there's no way of getting to your door."
Perhaps we need to pray always, not because it will get us the outcomes or dispositions we want, but because in order to have a relationship with God, it helps to become prayerful people.
Wonderful things can happen when we pray, regardless of our proficiency. Some years ago I spent a week at the Taize community, an ecumenical monastery in France. The community and the many visitors gathered together five times a day for prayer, which seemed excessively persistent at first. I wasn't sure what to do with the time. Those first few days, I found myself beginning my prayer with exasperation: "Here I am, God. Again."
By the end of the week, through no fault of my own, my prayers seemed to have shifted. They no longer began with my voice, but with God's. "Here I am, my friend. Still."
Maybe this is what C.S. Lewis meant when he said, "I don't pray because it changes God. I pray because it changes me." He didn't pray for the results, but rather for the prayer itself, and presumably for the relationship with God that developed in and through that prayer.
God longs for that relationship with us. In fact, if anyone is the persistent widow in this story, it is God. God is always moving toward us, trying to get to our doors to see if anyone is home, knocking on the door and seeing if anyone will answer.
Over time, prayer helps to form us into people who can hear God knocking, and who answer the door when God comes calling. But it doesn't happen overnight, and like any discipline, ups and downs should be expected. If there weren't any downs, why would Jesus tell a story about not losing heart? But thanks to a persistent God who will stop at nothing to reach us, we do not have to lose heart in that effort — because it is not the discipline that transforms us, but God's love that never loses a heart for us.
Jesus' parable turns our attention from "what" we do and "how" it's working, to "who" and "whose" we are in our relationship with God. Day in and day out, through little things like our prayer and our offering and our worship, we become generous, dependable people who rely on God.
Over time, through repetition more than proficiency, disciplines become a part of who we are. And over time, God finds a way to our door and right into our hearts.
— — —
Rev. Rebecca Schlatter is an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Reno, Nevada. You can contact her at {email newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com}newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Rebecca Schlatter.
While I'm sure there are proficient pray-ers out there somewhere, I've never found anyone who would claim that title. Most people I know say they'd like to learn how to pray "better." Sometimes it's the practice we struggle with: What do I do? How do I concentrate? What posture should I use? But even more often, the challenge is remembering and finding time to do it — the discipline.
By coincidence, the following Sunday we heard Luke 18:1-8, the parable of the persistent widow. Presumably, she had been cheated by someone (as the vulnerable too often are), and she went to a judge to ask for justice. He couldn't have cared less about her complaint and sent her away, but she was so persistent that he finally gave in, heard her case, and granted justice. The moral of the story for Jesus' disciples is "their need to pray always and not to lose heart" (Luke 18:1).
Hopeful, disciplined persistence is not usually our strong point as human beings; we much prefer instant gratification. We want to see results quickly, so persistence and losing heart go hand in hand. This is often true in the spiritual life, which rarely asks us to do big things but always asks us to do little things over and over, such as praying, worshiping, offering our money and our time, and (at my church, anyway) bringing one more dish to one more potluck.
The spiritual life invites us to lifelong discipline, one day or one prayer at a time. We can't just do it once, or even 10 times, and wonder why it didn't "work." But in spiritual disciplines without instant gratification, we soon get tired of knocking on God's door. "Does God need me to bang the door down?!"
Jesus says this story is about our need to pray always, not God's need to be prayed to. Theologian Frederick Buechner puts it like this in his book "Wishful Thinking": "According to Jesus, by far the most important thing about praying is to keep at it. ... Be importunate, Jesus says — not, one assumes, because you have to beat a path to God's door before he'll open it, but because until you beat the path maybe there's no way of getting to your door."
Perhaps we need to pray always, not because it will get us the outcomes or dispositions we want, but because in order to have a relationship with God, it helps to become prayerful people.
Wonderful things can happen when we pray, regardless of our proficiency. Some years ago I spent a week at the Taize community, an ecumenical monastery in France. The community and the many visitors gathered together five times a day for prayer, which seemed excessively persistent at first. I wasn't sure what to do with the time. Those first few days, I found myself beginning my prayer with exasperation: "Here I am, God. Again."
By the end of the week, through no fault of my own, my prayers seemed to have shifted. They no longer began with my voice, but with God's. "Here I am, my friend. Still."
Maybe this is what C.S. Lewis meant when he said, "I don't pray because it changes God. I pray because it changes me." He didn't pray for the results, but rather for the prayer itself, and presumably for the relationship with God that developed in and through that prayer.
God longs for that relationship with us. In fact, if anyone is the persistent widow in this story, it is God. God is always moving toward us, trying to get to our doors to see if anyone is home, knocking on the door and seeing if anyone will answer.
Over time, prayer helps to form us into people who can hear God knocking, and who answer the door when God comes calling. But it doesn't happen overnight, and like any discipline, ups and downs should be expected. If there weren't any downs, why would Jesus tell a story about not losing heart? But thanks to a persistent God who will stop at nothing to reach us, we do not have to lose heart in that effort — because it is not the discipline that transforms us, but God's love that never loses a heart for us.
Jesus' parable turns our attention from "what" we do and "how" it's working, to "who" and "whose" we are in our relationship with God. Day in and day out, through little things like our prayer and our offering and our worship, we become generous, dependable people who rely on God.
Over time, through repetition more than proficiency, disciplines become a part of who we are. And over time, God finds a way to our door and right into our hearts.
— — —
Rev. Rebecca Schlatter is an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Reno, Nevada. You can contact her at {email newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com}newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com{/email}. © Copyright 2007 by Rebecca Schlatter.