Mamaw’s Prayer
When my mother was about six, my
granddad was in a terrible electrical accident. He was an electrician, and
while working on a telephone pole, was electrocuted. He had burns all over his
body, especially his chest and arms. When they brought him to the hospital, and
the doctors told my grandmother there was no hope. They flat out refused to
treat him, because they said he was a waste of effort, a lost cause. Now my grandmother was a
teacher, and the daughter of a preacher. She believed fervently in the power of
prayer, and she certainly needed it then. She had three children, two young
boys and my mom, the youngest, a little girl. She got down on her knees, and
this was her prayer, “Lord, please don’t leave me alone here. Keep him alive,
to help me raise the children.”
In our reading from the book of
James, James writes to us about prayer. His advice is to give everything to
God. Listen to his words to us:
Are any among you suffering? They
should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among
you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over
them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will
save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed
sins will be forgiven. (James 5:13-15)
He tells us that the prayer of the
righteous is powerful and effective, and uses the example of Elijah, whose
prayers shut the heavens for three and a half years, and then opened them
again, delivering rain to a parched land. James encourages us to confess our
sins and ask forgiveness, that our prayers, whatever they might be, would be
answered.
James’ words echo other stories in
the scriptures about answered prayers. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that everyone
who asks receives and everyone who searches finds (Matthew 7:8). In the Gospel
of John, Jesus says, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for
whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7). And stories of
answered prayers abound. The Hebrew slaves cried out to God for deliverance,
and God lifted up Moses to lead them to the Promised Land. Hannah was barren,
and prayed for many years for a child of her own. God blessed her with Samuel,
who grew up to be a great prophet and judge of Israel. When Nathan confronted
David about his adultery with Bathsheba he falls to his knees to beg
forgiveness, and it is granted.
The reader would be forgiven for
thinking that the intent of this passage is to tell us that if we are good
people, God will do whatever we say. But anyone who has lived in the real world
for any period of time has seen too much to take it at face value. Tragedy
falls on believers and unbelievers alike, and some prayers remain unanswered.
There are men and women who feel called to be parents, but their prayers for a
child are never answered. There are children who pray each day that they might
find enough to eat, but as often as not lay their heads to rest with nothing in
their bellies. This is acknowledged even in the scriptures. The author of
Ecclesiastes acknowledges this reality when he writes “there are righteous
people who perish in their righteousness, and there are wicked people who
prolong their life in their evil doing.”
And
though the scriptures often record answered prayers, they also tell us of
prayers that were not answered.
The Psalms include both “I love the Lord, who heard my cry,” and “My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” Elijah, who is given as an example of
answered prayer, goes off into the woods, and says, “O Lord, take away my life,
for I am no better than my ancestors,” but the Lord has other plans. Even Jesus
offers up prayers that go unanswered. On the final night of his life, he prays
in the garden of Gethsemane, “Father, he says, for you all things are possible;
remove this cup from me; yet not what I want, but what you want.” Even though
Jesus is the epitome of human perfect, and none were more righteous than he,
but he too, experienced the disappointment of unanswered prayer.
But
let’s push a little further, and ask: what would happen if God really did
answer every prayer? If God did answer every prayer, it would be a perversion
of what we proclaim when we say that God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is our
Lord. For if God answered every prayer, our prayers would no longer be
petitions, but commands. God would not be our Lord and master, but a genie, who
we could use to get what we want. God is not Santa Claus, who gives every good
boy and girl exactly what they want, he is the Creator and Lord of all. As much
as we would like it, God is not under our control, or tame. God is a wild,
relentless power, who speaks to us out of the whirlwind, saying, “Where were
you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38:4)
Some would say that God answers all
our prayers, if only we pray the right way. They declare that if our motives
are pure and good, and we have repented of our sin and are in right
relationship with God, and our timing is correct, and our request is consistent
with what God wants, then our prayers will be answered in good time. Now these
are all excellent spiritual disciplines and true, especially that last part,
that if our request is consistent with what God wants it will be granted. But
saying it this way implies once again that we can control whether our prayers
are answered, if only we pray just right. Also, it implies that prayers that go
unanswered are somehow wrong, and forgets prayer’s value for helping us express
grief and pain, learn and grow, and experience closeness with God.
James doesn’t limit the value of
prayer to the answers we receive, but tells us that no matter what our
situation is, we should cling to and glorify God within it. In life and in
death, in sickness, and in health, we belong to God, who has taken us as his
own, enfolded us into his sheepfold, and called us by name.
James then uses the phrase, “The
prayer of faith.” Now in today’s Christianity, heavily influenced by Luther’s
“salvation by faith alone” we often conflate faith with belief. But the book of
James has emphasized that faith does not exist outside of our actions, outside
of our behavior. In this sense, faith is less about belief, and more about
trust. To have faith in something is to believe that something is true, whether
or not that belief is ever tested. But to trust is to act on your belief, to
put yourself in the position of being dependent.
So when James talks about the
prayer of faith, he is not telling us that if we just ask the right way, or
really and truly believe it in our hearts, then our answer is guaranteed. James
is talking about trust in God. The prayer of faith is an act of trust that God
will fulfill God’s promises and God’s will revealed in scripture. The prayer of faith declares, as Jesus
did, “not what I want, but what you want.” James tells us not to trust in our
own hopes and dreams, but to put our trust that God’s will for us is right,
though we may not understand it. As Philip Yancey puts it, “ I have learned
that faith is trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse.” To
pray in faith is to acknowledge an utter dependence on God’s will, even though
to do so might lead to results we don’t understand, because we know that what
God wants is best.
Now I don’t know what my
grandmother was thinking when she offered up her prayer in that hospital. When
she said, “Lord, let him live, to help me raise the children.” I cannot say is
she spoke with the confidence of one who is assured of success, or with the
nagging doubts that can plague us, or even without hope at all. But what I do
know is that when her family experienced tragedy, she clung to God as tightly
as she could.
Eventually they found a doctor who
was willing to operate. The family
held their breaths. Finally, after hours of waiting, they were given the news.
He had lost more than 20 feet of intestines and both of his arms, but somehow
he had survived
Papaw lived twelve more years. He
learned to use prosthetic arms. My mom says he got so good with those hooks
that he could pick up a piece of cigarette ash. Recently I stumbled across a
bunch of old pictures, and saw a couple of him holding two smallmouth bass he’d
caught. He loved to go fishing, Mom tells me. While Mamaw taught, making money
for the family, he stayed home and took care of the children. I guess he was a
stay at home dad way before it was cool.
When my mother was eighteen, Papaw
died. He died of depression by way of his own hand. Suicide is no easy thing
for a family to go through. The loss is painful, and it is made more so because
your anger is pointed in the same direction. They come together in a tornado of
emotion that seeks to consume you. But in the midst of that suffering and pain,
the family remembered Mamaw’s prayer. God kept him alive until all the children
were raised. And they clung all the more tightly to God.
The scriptures don’t tell us that
God will give us everything we want, or give us a clear set of steps to
guarantee getting our way in the world.
What they do tell us, is that God loves us, and promises to be with us
through everything that we do. And that the God we have, is a God worth putting
our trust in.
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