Constant Prayer

            Prayers are always on our lips.  We pray before our meals, pray before meetings, offer prayers constantly during our worship.  Our prayers are cries to our God because of our needs, our worries, our guilt.  The prayers that we offer come from our heart and are given to God because of our incredible need not only to have our prayers answered, but to somehow know that God is indeed in charge of this incredibly complex world. 

            My own prayer life fluctuates.  Sometimes I have no problem whatsoever offering prayer not only for my own needs and the needs of my family, but for the many other people who I know who are in crisis or are sick or are at some kind of a moment of decision in their lives.  My prayers for them are that God will touch them with his Love and help them through whatever is messing up their lives.  Other times, because of my own difficulties, my prayer life flags and I wander through my life needing, sometimes desperately wanting somehow an outside force to help me to get through the brambles that hold me back from real joy.  This is when I know that I depend on the prayers of others to get me through. 

            Jesus disciples also had problems with their prayers.  In Luke’s gospel, they ask Jesus to “teach us to pray as John taught his disciples”.  Jesus responds with the elegant formula that we call the Lord’s Prayer that has been a part of our worship tradition from the beginning.  I love this prayer because of its completeness.  It acknowledges God as holy and asks for the coming of the Kingdom, for the providence of our daily food and the forgiveness of our sins with the marvelous caveat that this be based on the way that we forgive each other.  That’s a tough hurdle to get over, but it is certainly a firm part of our belief system.  Jesus then goes on to talk to them about the persistence of prayer with the story of the man who bothers his neighbor over and over again because a friend has come and he has nothing to give him.  Jesus says that the persistent prayer will bear fruit, the man will provide what you need because you are a pain in the neck.  If this is an allusion to the nature of God, it is a wonderful comedy, but it is a useful reminder that the constancy of our prayer is necessary to having the prayer answered.

            Lots of people have stories that speak to this, how their persistent prayer has brought healing, jobs, other good things.  But there are many other people who have also prayed constantly and have not been rewarded with answers.  I don’t have a resolution to this except to again listen to what Jesus told his disciples.  Keep at it.  Prayer is necessary.  It not only asks God for what we need, but it keeps us connected with each other.  Sometimes that is the most wonderful thing that comes out of prayer.  Loving our neighbors as people like ourselves brings our prayers into focus.  We all need each other, including our prayers.  They are the essence of community.