Wednesday 23 April

DAILY BYTE – Why bother praying at all?

Another question ‘why’ that people often bring to this topic is to query why we need to bother praying at all when God sometimes seems not to answer our prayers. Jesus says that whatever we ask for in his name will be given to us, and that if we seek we will find and if we knock the door will be opened. Yet clearly, often what we directly ask for is not given to us. At other times it feels as if God is far away from us and that our prayers just disappear into thin air.

The thing is God DOES always answer prayers. It is just sometimes God says ‘no’. And sometimes God says, ‘not yet’ or ‘wait’.

This is where prayer can get so frustrating and difficult. We cannot understand the reason why God would be saying ‘no’ to requests that are heartfelt and genuinely unselfish.

Now the reason why God doesn’t answer some prayers as we expect is not something I can answer for you. I can only point you to the second illustration after the Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11. 1-13 where Jesus reminds us that God loves us even more than a good and loving parent loves their children.

If parents truly love their children then they will often say ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ to them - there will be limits to what they give them. Children get so frustrated with their parents over this but only because they cannot see the whole picture.

God may not always open the doors exactly as we would have them opened, but they will be opened.

Sometimes in quite surprising and wonderful ways.

In St. Augustine's ‘Confession’ he talks about how his mother, Monica, a committed Christian, was very concerned that as a young man, he lived a life of wild and irresponsible excess. Augustine was a very gifted, young scholar but soon realise that his home in North Africa did not hold all the opportunities for him that Europe would. He resolved to go to Italy that he might study more fully his chosen discipline of rhetoric. Monica, felt if he ever left her side, he would never come to know Christ.

And so one night she was praying earnestly in a chapel that Augustine not leave her, when in fact, he was already boarding a ship for Italy. He went to Milan, and once he got there he was told that if he wanted to hear rhetoric in its finest form, he ought to go down to the cathedral every Sunday because Bishop Ambrose was recognized as the greatest practitioner of rhetoric in all of Italy at that time.

Well, as it turned out, the young man began to do that and lo and behold, through Ambrose's rhetoric, the wonder of the Gospel began to break in on the consciousness of Augustine. It was through this experience that God eventually brought Augustine to a profound conversion, which led to his becoming one of the great shapers of modern theology. The interesting thing is that Monica had no idea that of all the people in the world, Ambrose was better equipped to bear witness to her son than she herself.

And years later as Augustine looked back on that experience, he said of that night when she was praying so earnestly that he not leave her side, God denied her the form of her request so that God might eventually give her the substance of it.

Perhaps, when we question why our prayers just don’t seem to be answered, all we can do is trust that in God’s heart there is nothing but unambiguous goodness. Trust that the response to our prayers will come from the heart of a heavenly parent who loves us better than we love ourselves and who truly knows what is best for us.

PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord, as difficult as it may be for us when our prayer seem unanswered, help us to always trust in your unambiguous goodness. Help us to trust that you have our best interests at heart. Amen.

FOCUS READING
Luke 11. 9 (NRSV)
So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.