Within the episodic four days of reunion with my friend of 44 years ( I alluded to him in my last post) the subject of prayer arose. He made the statement that when something is "wrong," he prays that God makes it "right." At the moment, the statement made absolutely no impression on me. But some days later, listening to a radio talk show, the host said, "most people in our country are satisfied with the status quo and until there is rebellion against the status quo, there will be absolutely no change." I was so stricken, convicted and quickened that I stopped what I was doing. No doubt it is the feisty in me that caused my heart to beat faster and my eyes light up at the thought. To rebel against the status quo in this light is to challenge life where it has resigned itself to something less. Rebellion is for bring about rebirth and reformation where life and/or faith is stale. Immediately, I took up a note pad and carpenters pencil, making note of what my friend believed and practiced; fueled by the comments of the talk show host. So in a few short paragraphs, I attempt to explain my idea of praying, at times, with an element of rebellion.
Candidly, it is a sorely honest but sad response that I have had of the world today: “it is what it is.” And it won't change anything to worry about it. Prayer in this sense is useless. The here and now of suffering is untouchable.
From headline to headline, channel to channel, conversation to conversation, I find the weariness of life and the problem of a dark world screaming at me, and in many ways have grown to see it as an unchangeable reality. Particularly, in the political maze. I realize I have come to terms with the world as it is, it is only because I have come to refuse thinking about how it could be, or how it was supposed to be, or how I could even have an idea that something is wrong in the first place. It is not that I am unconscious of the injustice, suffering, and even evil around me, but most times, I feel utterly powerless to do anything about it.
It is to this soul of mine that Christianity speaks. Every prophet, every action of Jesus, and movement of God, holds forth the declaration: This is not the way it's supposed to be!
Prayer, in this sense, is rebelling against the status quo of a world going wrong. It is refusing to come to terms with an unjust, dark and evil world. Prayer remembers not only that the world as I find it can be changed, but that it should be changed, and that there is one who can change it. It is at his feet, even in my weariness, I want to sit.
As the psalmist has prayed,
Hear my voice when I call, O LORD;
be merciful to me and answer me.
My heart says of you, 'Seek his face!'
Your face, LORD, I will seek.
Jesus instructed his followers to pray, "Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:9,10). In prayer I can stand in rebellion against a world that is not hallowing the name of God, a world not looking for signs of the kingdom, a world wholly uninterested in doing the will of anyone but self. Where did I get off track? I know that the nature of prayer, as Christ taught, is a persistent posture toward God as sovereign, an undeterred vision of what the kingdom is, can, and ought to be, a vision of what God intended. Cognitive Dissidence? Maybe, but then again, have I just become sick and tired of being sick and tired of it all; hunkering and bunkering down?
As a professed Christian, I am convinced that I need to seek the face of God not to escape reality but to find reality! I need to stand before the sovereign in His kingdom with all that is here and now—with pain and sickness, with goodness and mercy, with all that is unjust and corrupt, and all that is right and beautiful. As a strong believer, stand with confidence in Christ that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. For His is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
