prayer

A Small Thought on What We Pray For

February 7, 2022 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

As I noted last time, I’ve been studying the book of Ruth lately. With the help of commentator Dan Block, I’ve been confronted with something in the book that I found striking.

Most commentators note that the book is mostly dialogue; about 52% of the Hebrew words there are spoken by various characters in the story. A recurring theme in these speeches is prayer for blessing:

“Now behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem and said to the reapers, ‘May the Lord be with you.’ And they said to him, ‘May the Lord bless you’ ” (Ru 2.4).
“Her mother-in-law then said to her, ‘Where did you glean today and where did you work? May he who took notice of you be blessed’ “ (Ru 2.19).
“Then he said, ‘May you be blessed of the Lord, my daughter. You have shown your last kindness to be better than the first by not going after young men, whether poor or rich’ ” (Ru 3.10).
“Then the women said to Naomi, ‘Blessed is the Lord who has not left you without a redeemer today, and may his name become famous in Israel’ “ (Ru 4.14).

There are other prayers that call for blessing without using the word:

“And Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, ‘Go, return each of you to her mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me. ⁹May the Lord grant that you may find rest, each in the house of her husband.’ Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept” (Ru 1.8-9).
“[Boaz said to Ruth,] ‘May the Lord reward your work, and your wages be full from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to seek refuge’ ” (Ru 2.12).
“All the people who were in the court, and the elders, said, ‘We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, both of whom built the house of Israel; and may you achieve wealth in Ephrathah and become famous in Bethlehem. ¹²Moreover, may your house be like the house of Perez whom Tamar bore to Judah, through the offspring which the Lord will give you by this young woman’ “ (Ru 4.11-12).
“[The women of Bethlehem said to Naomi,] ‘May he also be to you a restorer of life and a sustainer of your old age; for your daughter-in-law, who loves you and is better to you than seven sons, has given birth to him’ “ (Ru 4.15).

That’s seven prayers (the last bullet point in each set being from the same prayer) in just four relatively short chapters.

Boaz blesses his field workers (and they him) and Ruth (twice).
Naomi blesses her daughters-in-law and Boaz.
The people of Bethlehem bless Ruth and Naomi.

Do you notice anything?

Nobody prays for his own needs. Not Boaz, the (likely) old bachelor, who, as it turns out, could really benefit from a wife, both as a companion and as the provider of a family line. Not Naomi, the childless widow who is in imminent danger of starvation. Not the people of Bethlehem, who have just emerged from a famine. And not Ruth, who has left all she knows to live in a foreign and hostile culture.

Nobody. As Block notes in the New American Commentary, “It is striking that no one in the book prays for a resolution of his own crisis. In each case a person prays that Yahweh would bless someone else. This is a mark of ḥesed” (pp 612-13).

Hesed is the Hebrew word translated “kindly” or “kindness” in Ruth 1.8, 2.20, and 3.10. It’s the “mercy” in the oft-used biblical statement that “[God’s] mercy endureth forever.” It speaks of fierce loyalty to a relationship that’s based on love.

Now, other biblical passages make it clear that praying for your own needs is not only tolerated but encouraged and even welcomed. Both Paul and Peter tell us to cast our care on God, making our requests known (Php 4.6; 1P 5.7). But against the dark background of the Judges, when “every man did what was right in his own eyes,” it’s remarkable to see a community where the first concern is for others.

Photo by Jack Sharp on Unsplash

On Prayer As Relationship

July 12, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Back in 2003 my family and I went to China for a month. While we were there, we took a weekend to visit Wuyi Shan, or Wuyi Mountain. It’s a popular tourist site, with the biggest attraction being hiking up the mountain itself. I was amused by the fact that bottled water cost 2 yuan at the bottom of the mountain, and 10 yuan at the top. Looks like capitalism to me. :-)

We hired a local guide while we were there, and one of the many places she took us was a Buddhist monastery in the area. She showed us the various sections of the place, and the highlight of course was the room with a large statue of the Buddha. Unsurprisingly, there was a small shrine there, with some incense sticks that devotees could light for a small payment. Our guide lit one, placed it in the sandbox that served as a container, and paused for a few moments to fold her hands, bow her head, close her eyes, and offer a prayer. We stood quietly as she did so.

As we continued our tour, I asked her what she prayed for when she prayed to the Buddha. She seemed surprised at the question, as if there were only one possible answer. “We pray for luck,” she said. “What do you Christians pray for?”

“We pray for one another,” I said.

I know my answer was simplistic. And that’s the point of today’s post.

Prayer involves a lot of things. In a post awhile back I noted that like many other Christians I usually follow the prayer pattern ACTS, for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. There are other patterns as well, and it’s perfectly fine to follow no pattern at all.

Which brings me to my point.

I think we often miss the whole point of prayer.

I’ve seen sermons and books about “how to get your prayers answered.” A colleague of mine and I were talking about prayer once, and she satirically referred to prayer chains as “adding your vote to the luck bucket.”

Prayer is not an election. (Election in theology is a different thing entirely. :-) ) It’s not a democratic process in which we all get together and try to talk an inattentive or uninterested or skeptical God into being convinced that this particular thing is really, really important to us, and would he please, please do the thing so we’ll be happier, or more comfortable, or less anxious?

Prayer includes requests, things we want “answered,” of course. In fact, God himself tells us to come boldly into his presence in prayer (He 4.16) and to let our “requests be made known to” him (Php 4.6). As a father—even a deeply imperfect one—I know how much more I would have given my children if they had just asked.

Ask. Yes.

But seeing prayer as primarily or essentially a shopping list is to miss the whole point of the thing.

Prayer is not a sacrament or a rite. It’s a natural consequence of being in a relationship.

For 37 years this month I’ve been in a formal, legal relationship with my wife. But it’s far more than just formal or legal. It’s personal. And because it’s personal, we communicate. We communicate because we like to, but more essentially we communicate because that’s what people in a relationship do; you can’t have a relationship without communicating, and communicating is pretty much the central way in which you conduct a relationship.

God and I have a relationship. So we talk. As you’ve often heard, he talks to us through his word, and we talk to him through prayer.

What do we talk about?

Whatever; whatever we have to say. I talk to him about what he’s said to me in his word. I talk to him about our relationship; what I’ve experienced since the last time we talked; how I feel about those experiences; what questions I have (and there are many).

We just talk.

And that’s why prayer is more than just asking for stuff, putting my vote in the luck bucket. It will include adoration—love talk, if you will—and confession and thanksgiving and yes, supplication.

And anything else.

That’s how relationships work.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Believing Prayer

December 19, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

The prophet Isaiah is receiving visions from God that open to him the long corridor of future time.

The message is mixed.

The first 39 chapters of the book contain a lot of really bad news. The current bogeyman on the world stage, Assyria, is going to be replaced by another equally bad one, Babylon. And Babylon is going to be the hammer that brings judgment to Judah for its persistence in the very sins that have already brought God’s judgment on Israel through Assyria—

idolatry
mindless ritualism in worship
social injustice

And there’s no doubt that this judgment will come.

But starting with chapter 40, the tone and message change dramatically. Words of comfort. Promises of restoration and blessing. A Messiah. A Servant of Yahweh.

Near the end of the book there’s a passage that seems to get odder the longer you think about it.

¹For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not keep quiet,
Until her righteousness goes forth like brightness,
And her salvation like a torch that is burning.
²The nations will see your righteousness,
And all kings your glory;
And you will be called by a new name
Which the mouth of the Lord will designate.
³You will also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
And a royal diadem in the hand of your God (Is 62.1-3).

There’s the promise of blessing, which will surely come to undeserving Jerusalem. But the part that really catches my eye is the first verse. This blessing, this restoration is so critically important to God that he will not stop talking about it. He will not rest until he brings it to pass.

That sets us up for an even more remarkable statement a bit farther down the passage:

⁶On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen;
All day and all night they will never keep silent.
You who remind the Lord, take no rest for yourselves;
⁷And give Him no rest until He establishes
And makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.

God orders his people to hold him to his promise—to badger him, to nag him, to hector him—to “give him no rest” until the promise is fulfilled. And the exclamation point on all this is that he himself has appointed those “watchmen” with the specific task of hectoring him.

God’s really, really serious about keeping his promises.

You’re probably thinking about the implications of this principle for our prayer life, and you’re right to do so; Jesus himself endorses that application.

In Luke 18 Jesus tells a parable about an unjust judge who doesn’t care about the people or the cases they bring before him. But there’s this woman who just won’t quit bothering him about her case. Eventually he rules justly, not because he cares for justice, but because he’s sick and tired of the woman’s hectoring. As he puts it, “by continually coming she will wear me out” (Lk 18.5)—literally, “give me a black eye.” No mas, he says.

Unfortunately, some Christians have assumed from this parable that God is like the unjust judge—that he needs to be convinced to help us, that we have to beat him down and wear him out to extract his begrudging grace. But as my colleague Layton Talbert has wisely and reverently noted, this kind of thinking misses the whole point of the passage.

Jesus is not saying that the Father is like the unjust judge; to the contrary, his point is that the Father is not like the judge. This is an a fortiori argument, one from the weaker to the stronger: if even an unjust judge will do the right thing when asked—enough, and with enough force—how much more will your heavenly Father do the right thing when we ask him? If a judge will do this for someone he doesn’t even know or care about, how much more will our Father, who cares for us as his own children, do for us when we ask? (Lk 18.6-7).

God is the kind of person who listens to his children and responds to them generously. He even appoints people to nag him until he keeps his promises (Is 62.6-7), even though he’s completely focused on their good and doesn’t need to be reminded (Is 62.1).

Go ahead and ask.

Photo by Samuel Martins on Unsplash