What do you hope for when you talk to God?
Both the Second Book of Chronicles and the prophet Isaiah
call the patriarch Abraham a “friend of God.”
So, it is perhaps not surprising that, in the Book of Genesis, Abraham frequently
enters into conversation with the Lord, particularly when he is seeking clarification. And so, when God sends his emissaries to
Sodom and Gomorrah to investigate the sin
of the people there (specifically, their oppression of the poor), Abraham worries
that God’s action against them might sweep
away the innocent with the guilty. Abraham’s
persistent questioning of the Lord represents his effort to understand the
parameters of divine justice and mercy; his prayer – his dialogue with God – involves
attentiveness to God’s will, an awareness of God’s plan that can only be
grasped by listening.
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus similarly teaches his disciples
about the nature of prayer: they are to bless the name of God – hallowed be your name – to bless all
that God is and does. They are to pray for the kingdom to come, that all
might know God’s mercy, and they may ask for forgiveness of their own sins,
listening to God’s answer, that proper relationship with the Lord might be
restored. Jesus’ parable of the friend who
comes in the night suggests the value of persistence. Most importantly, we are to be persistent
until we understand God’s answer to our prayer:
seek and you will find, Jesus
tells the disciples – not that you will necessary find what you want, but that you come to
understand what God wants.
The process of prayer is meant to take us ever deeper into
our awareness of God’s will, that we might come to understand God’s full
revelation to us in the death and rising of Jesus. Paul tells the Colossians that in death,
Jesus nailed the law of Moses to the cross; the law, which has been
keeping the people from true relationship with God, needed to die in the flesh
of Jesus, that we might all enjoy a new relationship – a new conversation, a
new dialogue – with the Lord. When we
pray about what God wants, we are opening to that relationship on deeper terms,
opening to a closer bond – which is not up to God, but up to us, since it
requires change and conversion in us. God doesn’t need to love us more or to be present to us
more; we need to be more aware of God,
that we might grown in faith and, ultimately, sing God’s praise in the presence of the angels (Psalm 138) as we appreciate the fathomless depths of God’s mercy and forgiveness.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
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