Confronted with the most appalling tragedies, our reflex reaction is to become responsible for telling God exactly what he should do next.
Be it the devastating scenario being enacted in Haiti right now. Or sexually abused children, mass genocide or whatever. Our reflex is to go looking for nice rounded prayers of the ‘ask, seek, knock’ kind Jesus spoke of in Matthew 7.
But when it comes to prayer, why do we always feel there have to be words to say? Exactly the right words! And essentially they are about telling God what he ought to be doing.
Already confronted by circumstances way beyond our ability to comprehend, we drive our feeble minds to now deliver the Almighty’s action plan and check list. Anything less, we feel, is not ‘prayer’.
I know that’s what happens because I’ve been there. Like that recurring dream of being caught in a grocery store wearing nothing but a tee shirt – feeling exposed and guilty for having so little to say.
But is that really what God expects of us when faced with the incomprehensible? That we are to launch into the articulate when reeling breathless – like a boxer staggering from a low blow?
It has taken me far too long to realise the answer is a gloriously resounding ‘no’.
In circumstances like these – and many others where we are overwhelmed – God gives us permission just to gasp in his presence. To soak up the pain and present it to him. Indeed, this is surely what it means to be an intercessor – a ‘go between’. One who stands between what ‘is’ and the God who knows exactly how it ‘ought to be’.
At times words are bound to fail us because we fall somewhat short of being the all-knowing and all-powerful God. We are simply those who also feel the pain of his broken world and want to bring it to him. So together we – he and us – can hold hands in the dark. To know he is there – whether we feel it or not. To know he cares desperately and passionately – whether there is evidence or not.
And to trust his promise that his Spirit will take the unspoken utterings of our inner being and make sense of them to his own ears. Because, as St Paul reminded the Christians in Rome, ‘We don’t know what we ought to pray for but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.’ Romans 8:26.
Adapted from my book Rich Thinking About the World’s Poor
Posted by meadowsesq 
