My Confortation With Prayer

I can’t say I’m a man of intent prayer.  I mean; I don’t spend hours in concentrated prayer daily.  Most days not even an hour. But the other morning, in what I simply call my quiet time, I read: “For most of us the prayer in Gethsemane is the only model.  Removing mountains can wait.”  The author was C.S. Lewis in Letters to Malcolm.  I did not let it pass as I might normally have, as Lewis says the most amazing things which, if I parse, blow my mind. Rather, I began to ruminate on a mentor, telling me, fifty years ago, that we only seem to truly pray when we are in the midst of despair. When we have no other excuses to offer, no other comfort to hide behind, no more façades to uphold, we are most likely to bow in exhaustion and be real with God and ourselves.

This was after I had preached my first sermon based on the story of Jonah. I remember laying on a sofa, shoes off, afghan covered, cup of tea, and grandfather clock's tick-tock, as my mentor encouraged me to find the interest in words that in some ways seemed not to fit in the sermon at all. Interrupting a narrative that quickly draws in its hearers, a narrative about Jonah, the text fleetingly brings the voice of Jonah himself before returning again to the narrative. The eight lines of 2:2-10 come in the form of a distraught, though poetic prayer. And while it is true that the poem could be omitted without affecting the coherence of the story, the deliberate jaunt in the narrative text seems to provide a moment of significant commentary to the whole. The eight verses of poetry not only mark an abrupt shift in the tone of the text, but also in the attitude of its main character. The poetic words of the prophet, spoken as a cry of deliverance, arise from the belly of the fish—a stirring image reminiscent of David's question: "Where can I flee from your presence? If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me."

Jonah's eloquent prayer for deliverance stands out in a book that is detailed with his egotistic mantras and glaring self-deceptions. By his own actions, Jonah finds himself in darkness, and yet it is in the dark that he speaks most honestly to God. The story is familiar, and yet memory often seems to minimize the distress that broke Jonah's silence with God. The popular notion that Jonah went straight from the side of the ship into the mouth of the fish is not supported by either the narrative as a whole or Jonah's prayer. H. L. Ellison suggests in the Expositors Bible Commentary, "Jonah was half drowned before he was swallowed. If he was still conscious, sheer dread would have caused him to faint—notice that there is no mention of the fish in his prayer. He can hardly have known what caused the change from wet darkness to an even greater dry darkness. When he did regain consciousness, it would have taken some time to realize that the all-enveloping darkness was not that of Sheol but of a mysterious safety."

Thinking of prayers I have offered in my deepest despair, the despair is always memorable, even palpable. And yet so is the sense that God is listening, that God is near, that in this pained and enveloping darkness the veil between us is somehow parted. The goal of Mrs. Goldsby, my first, most dynamic eighty year old mentor was to lead me in experiencing the fact that God is listening, whether the darkness is self-inflicted or thrown upon me like a violent sea. Likewise, she also wanted me to understand that Jonah would be a reminder to me of what would be all too often my ironic refusal to face the face of a God who is equally present in the light of the ordinary. In prayer and desperation, Jonah admitted the role of salvation is not in his hands. If only momentarily, the drowning prophet clung to a truth more secure than comfort and able than his alternatives: "Salvation belongs to the LORD."

Sadly, Jonah's distracted theology returned not long after the prayer was finished and his life was vomited back into normalcy. And in many ways, for me, it has been a familiar tale. Honest words offered in despair remain with God in the darkness where I once cried out, the return of familiarity convincing me of a God more comfortably and safely remote. But if Jonah leaves me with a thought in the dark, it is the presence of choice. Which view of God do I prefer? Which veil? Which distance? Which safety?

Once convinced there was a place he could flee from God's presence, the prophet, sinking further into the depths of the sea, realized he was mercifully mistaken. ME AS WELL.