the impossibility of prayer

Last night at Alpha, week four, the subject was prayer, and Nikki Gumbel spoke about the hows, whys, and whens of prayer and then finished up with an impossible story of one man's refusal to give up in his prayers. Long story short: British actor, whose wife left him after three years, became a Christian. She would have nothing to do with him, was living with another man, and so he began to pray for her to know Christ, not for the marriage. As she was pressing toward divorce, he sent her and her new man two tickets to see Billy Graham. She sent the tickets back. Billy Graham stayed an extra day, unexpectedly, and the ex-husband sent two more tickets. The live-in bf couldn't go, so long and short they went together. At the end when Graham asked people to come down and be counted among Christ's own, she ran down the stairs. Her soon to be ex-husband (the decree nicae had already gone out) had never stopped praying for her. They are now living as a married couple again.

It's my prayer for my husband -- I doubt our marriage could ever be salvaged out of the mess he made with his serial affairs and various other sexual activities, but I was reminded that we are to pray ever.

I was also reminded of how faithful our God is. For the last little while, I've been quite preoccupied with my son's distance and sometimes aggressive behaviour. He's been swearing more, and lashing out at his sister. Because of the family situation, I have been loathe to press him too much because I know I can be a little overwhelming on that score -- kind of like picking pimples til there's no skin left. Over the weekend I was reading through John's gospel, around chapters 15-17 and was struck by Jesus prayer to His Father over the spiritual provision for his disciples that not a man of them was to be lost. He prays for their souls. he prays -- and pays -- for our souls. We are given the promise that what we ask we will be given, as long as it is right minded. I have prayed lately for some assurance from God that all is and shall be well with my son's soul and faith journey. The night before last when he was particularly beastly with his sister, I started to talk with him, and he really unloaded. He's lonely, this separation has left him unsettled, his sister's behaviour is worse because she's trying to get his attention more now, and he's sad over his gf dropping him, and he's not sure where he's going after high school, and whether he has what it takes to get into medicine, although he's now not sure he even wants to do that. But we also talked about faith, and I was given the assurance I'd prayed for that he is exploring it more, that his heart is for God.

Praise God! And thanks for his answers to prayer.

and then again...

No sooner did I finish my last post, but this came to my inbox from Christian quotation of the day,and humbled me. I must have more patience, and forebearance, just as the Lord has done with me:

Lord Jesus Christ! A whole life long didst thou suffer that I too might be saved; and yet thy suffering is not yet at an end; but this too wilt thou endure, saving and redeeming me, this patient suffering of having to do with me, I who so often go astray from the right path, or even when I remained on the straight path stumbled along it or crept so slowly along the right path. Infinite patience, suffering of infinite patience. How many times have I not been impatient, wished to give up and forsake everything; wished to take the terribly easy way out, despair: but thou didst not lose patience. Oh, I cannot say what thy chosen servant says: that he filled up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in his flesh; no, I can only say that I increased thy sufferings, added new ones to those which thou didst once suffer in order to save me. ... Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Journals,

Getting Up and Going On

I could make excuses, and some of them sound and legitimate, for not keeping up with this blog. The past several months have been extremely stressful for family reasons. The situation with access to my elderly father deteriorates, and there is nothing we can do legally -- my brother manages to keep just one inch above the law on this. The marriage teeters on the edge of nothingness and many days I just feel like giving up. Freelance work has come to a standstill and my income is half what it was last year, which wasn't any great shakes then.

Lo, the many times I've been lying awake at night feeling completely overwhelmed by the problems, and feeling I can't find a way out of this. I start dragging up things from childhood, and mistakes I made, and dwell in a constant whirlwind of self-doubt, self-recrimination, and sense of hopelessness.

Payer is the only thing that drags me out of it. And that usually prompts me toward thanksgiving: how my children thrive, with Aidan reaching new levels of relationship with God, and Anna dealing with anxiety and perfectionism; and also to view how blessed I am compared to about 97% of the population.

I try to remember what Harriet Tubman always said to herself: "Just keep on goin', Harriet, keep on goin'." And she did it with Christian love.

And then today's cqod (Christian quotation of the day) came to my inbox and knocked all that sheer determination on its head:

To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do-- to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst--is by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your
life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your own.
... Frederick Buechner (b. 1926), The Sacred Journey, San
Fransisco: Harper & Row, 1982, p. 46


Yes, we've been given a brain to think through things, a will to carry out what we think is right, and even a heart to temper it all with compassion. But this quote talks about obedience, I think -- that we must wait on the Lord and remain open for Him to do His work. I have failed to obey this in my quest to fix problems.