Prayer changes everything.
Yahweh hears.
He answers.
He acts
Out of his great love.
(Everyday Psalms, Psalm 27, page 56)
The primary reason most people pray is to get God to do stuff. It’s also the primary reason people stop praying, since God doesn’t always do what we want him to do. In fact, when “answers to prayers” is our only benchmark for the value of our prayers, we can walk away pretty disappointed.
But God does in fact hear and answer prayer and he does in fact act in the world. The Scriptures and the history of the people of God and even our own lives bear witness to this. Our prayers are not just wishing upward and whistling in the dark. The Master of the Universe is actively involved in the world he created and engages with the details of it and us.
Our Lord is not the Watchmaker of the Deists, a deity who puts the universe together, winds it up, and lets it go. No. God has tied himself to his creation with bonds of love. And he has tied his creation to his great purposes. These mutual ties lead to mutual participation. God invites us to participate in his life as we are baptized into Christ and live “in Christ” as children of God and heirs with Christ. At the same time, God inhabits our lives by his Spirit, participating in all kinds of things in our lives as a result. This mutual participation is why it only makes sense to ask things of God and for him to answer and act.
The ultimate expression of God’s ties to and participation in the world is the incarnation of Jesus. God enters into the world and lives a human life. And his ultimate answer to the cries of the world is the action of the cross. And if God in Jesus is willing to enter into the world and go to the cross for the world, then he certainly will answer and act in other ways for the sake of the world. This is what gives us the confidence to ask. This and the example of so many throughout the Scriptures who ask plus the words of Jesus himself, telling us to ask.
He said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matt. 7:7). And so we ask and seek and knock.
This doesn’t mean we don’t get frustrated when we don’t get the answers or the actions we want. We do. But we keep asking and seeking and knocking because we know that God has tied himself to us and we participate in the life of the Trinity.
Prayer: Jesus, thank you for entering into the world you created and for answering our greatest need on the cross. I offer to you all that is empty and broken in my life and in the lives of those around me. Fill and restore. Bring light out of darkness and good out of evil. Hear my requests to you, answer and act on my behalf. I need you and what only you can give. Amen.