Yahweh’s faithful character
Can be seen in all he does.
It makes his words believable —
Always true,
Always making things right.
For Yahweh loves when relationships
Are made right,
Loving it when justice prevails.
He pours out his relentless, unstoppable love
Till it covers every inch of earth.
(Everyday Psalms, Psalm 33, page 70)
I engage with my wife because we’re married to each other. I know, I know, that doesn’t sound romantic, but marriages are maintained by each partner turning toward the other and remaining engaged with one another. If I were to to cease engaging with my wife, our marriage would eventually cease as well. We’d be married in name alone. Likewise, a prayerless Christian is one in name alone.
The dark heart of the Psalms is the depressed and painful Psalm 88. It yells and accuses and complains at God. It blames God for everything wrong in the psalmist’s life. And when it comes to its dreadful conclusion, it ends with these bleak words: “Darkness is my only friend” (Ps. 88:18). I shudder when I read it, hoping I never land in such a place of loneliness and anger and despair. But I find myself circling back to this gloomy prayer because of what it is: a prayer. As bitter as the psalmist is, he never stops praying. The fact that he prays his bitterness is in itself a sign that his belief will eventually triumph over that bitterness. Praying the bitterness is itself the antidote to the bitterness. The psalmist is in the process of praying himself into spiritual health.
The act of praying is an act of engagement and belief not matter the quality or quantity of that engagement and belief.
Belief cannot help but engage with the one believed in, especially one so ever-present as God. He is always the elephant in the room for those who believe. And so we turn to him and pray. That’s what we’ve always done and what we’ll always do.
I keep on praying because I keep on believing. I keep on believing because I keep in praying.
The tension and interplay between praying and believing is summed up in a single sentence in the Gospels: “I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
The scene is of a father who has watched his son suffer and has certainly prayed for his son’s deliverance without any change taking place. The scene is also of disciples who have tried to deal with the situation. The scene is also of a boy who has been robbed of speech and who seizes up, clenching his teeth, becoming rigid, and foaming from the mouth. We look back at this as epilepsy. They looked at it as evidence of an unclean spirit. Perhaps it was both. Finally, the scene is also of Jesus, coming down from the mountain where he’s been affirmed by the Father and transfigured, his Glory briefly unveiled. The scene is one of all of these people and their various beliefs and struggles to believe coming together turbulently.
Jesus doesn’t avoid the clash. Instead, he dives right into it. He names the unbelief of his disciples and the crowd around them: “You unbelieving generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?” (Mark 9:19) Ouch! And when the father says, “if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us” (Mark 9:22), Jesus responds with a sarcastic, “‘If you can?’” It’s in reaction to this, the father makes his famous exclamation, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
If Jesus is Lord as we believe he is, then any words spoken to him are prayer. And hearing the conflicted, pleading prayer of a father who has come up empty for so long, believing and unbelieving at the same time, Jesus accepts it all.
It’s not the quality or the quantity of our believing that counts. It’s being there. It’s acting. It’s our willingness to continue to engage with the God who engages with us.
Prayer: I believe in you, our Lord. Help me with my unbelief. In between the belief and the unbelief, I come to you again. I don’t measure my belief on a scale of one to ten. Instead I offer what I’ve got, turning toward you in hopes of seeing that you are turned toward me. And there you are, hearing my prayer and taking however much of belief I have to offer and saying, “It is enough, my child. I need no more.” In Jesus. Amen.