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St. Luke’s United Methodist Church
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In the movie, “Skylark”, Sarah, a prairie farm woman, helps her husband,
Jacob, with the pre-dawn birthing of a calf. As the dawn breaks, they
stand back, weary from the effort but pleased at the outcome, observing
the young newborn with its mother. Jacob, who is usually quiet, says,
“That face, pale as the winter moon.” Awed by his observation, Sarah
recalls something that Anna, their daughter, has said. “To think, Anna
says sometimes you’re not good with words.” Jacob looks at his wife. He
is suddenly overwhelmed at the depth of his love for her. He whispers,
“Sometimes, words are not good enough.
A nurse from our congregation cares for an elderly man in the hospital. He has not had any visitors since his admittance. The nurse senses that he is close to death. So she goes to his room after her shift and sits with him for an hour, holding his hand. The next day she learns that the man dies shortly after she ends her visit with him. She comes to me, struggling. “I thought I needed to pray,” she says. “But I couldn’t find the words. They seemed inadequate to the moment.” Sometimes, words just aren’t good enough. After the declaration of war by President George Herbert Walker Bush in what we call the Gulf War, some of us in Grand Junction, Colorado, gather for prayer. We have songs, we have scripture, we have prayer, and then songs, and scripture, and prayer…for a long time. There is seated next to me a young man, I think about seventeen or eighteen, who might have been a freshman at Mesa State, I don’t know. In the course of the sentence prayers, he asks that God be with the women and the children in Iraq who will be hurt and killed in the war. When it is over, a man in his mid-fifties comes over to that young man and says, “Are you on Saddam’s side?” He says, “Uh, no, sir.” “Well, you’re praying for the wrong people.” Our words may not be good enough…to reflect the will of God. On September 16, 2001, the Sunday after the terrorist attacks, people around the world come together for worship. My church gathers in the sanctuary around a candle tree and offers prayers for the victims, for the families in grief, for the loss of innocence, for the leaders of our nation, and for the perpetrators of the horrors. As each prayer is offered, a candle is lit. At the first service, Tracy offers a prayer for the terrorists. She then attempts to light the candle. It refuses to catch. After much attention to the wick, a tiny flame just barely holds on. I struggle to find the words to articulate my feelings about this feeble spark. Are we not to pray for our enemies? O God, why should this candle be frustrated in its effort to give off light? On many occasions, when I feel the urge to pray, I am frustrated at the effort. I echo the sentiment of Abraham Lincoln. “I have been driven to my knees many times because there is nothing else to say and nowhere else to go. As Jacob says to Sarah, “Sometimes words are not good enough.” Paul seems to understand this voiceless-ness. He writes to the church at Rome about the seasons in which prayer dries on the lips, when hearts are frozen, or broken, or confounded, and speech is impossible. Paul wants us to see under the surface, behind the silence, and into the void. These difficulties can be likened to a time of pregnancy, he says, when the struggle promises new birth. These painful times are simply birth pangs. The Spirit of God is arousing us within and we’re feeling the labor. The yearning signals the building of a future new world, God’s world. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother, any more than the watching of a bud to bloom. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is changing us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy. Meanwhile, the moment we get weary in the waiting, God’s spirit is right alongside, helping us. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. The Spirit does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs. The Spirit knows us far better than we know ourselves. A young pastor calls me in great despair over the treatment she has been receiving from a person in authority. Phone calls are not being returned, meetings are being held without the pastor, financial difficulties are not being addressed. This situation has been going on for some time, and Susan feels betrayed, abused, and hopeless. She is so angry she can not talk straight. When she pauses in her tale of woe, I ask her what her prayers have been like during this time. “Prayers?” she responds. “What prayers? I can’t pray. I don’t know where God is. I feel abandoned. How could God let this happen? How can God’s servants be so incompetent? I’m so angry! So angry! I’m angry with God!” “Tell God how angry you are, Susan. Take your fury into prayer. God can handle it,” I respond. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; And by night, but find no rest. (Psalm 22: 12) When we feel like my friend Susan feels, not only can we not begin to think of praying for our enemies, we cannot pray at all. First we need to return to God. By praying about our experience of abandonment, we move back into relationship with God. We answer God with anger and despair, but we answer. And when we answer, we discover that God has been there all along. When speech fails, consider using the imagination rather than the mouth as a way to get to God. When the situation is so complex that God’s will is un-discernable, when the burden cannot be carried, when words just aren’t good enough, seek God’s light. This Quaker form of prayer is called “holding in the light”. This is spirit seeking Spirit, prayer that isn’t frustrated by words. Envision a stream of God’s light, radiating warmth. This could be a place where the light of the Presence is powerful, a bay window, a rock outcropping at Bear Lake, a spot on a mountain ridge where the sunrise breaks through, a sunset through evening storm clouds. When I hold someone in the light, I remember this sanctuary about 4:00 on a summer afternoon when the rays of light shine through the west window and illuminate the altar. Wherever the light is found, allow the glory to fill your consciousness. Now, place in your hands the person who has a need for healing, a situation that you want to bring before God in prayer, an event that you wish to bring before the throne of grace. Then, lift your hands to the light. Visualize God’s light bathing your hands, gently penetrating defenses, dissolving pain, cleansing wounds. Use any images that seem appropriate: dark becoming light, ice melting, confusion ordered. See a state of wholeness, newly-created, fresh, and beautiful as seen through the eyes of divine love. Ask that this beauty be fully realized according to God’s design. Thank God for whatever gift of healing is given. Release the person into God’s care until you pray again. The practice of “holding in the light’ can tutor you to use your imagination more actively, visualizing restored relationships, seeing old animosities dissolve. You are not trying to manufacture results, but as Paul explains, envisioning with God the restoration of creation. Several years ago, a young man comes to me, seeking counsel. He is distressed about his employer, a domineering man whose rude-ness and lack of sensitivity are deflating. This young man has moved his family from Virginia to Wyoming to work in this emerging company, hoping that someday he can buy the owner’s interest and run the company himself. When he comes to see me, that prospect looks bleak. This young man is bitter and angry. He is beginning to experience upset stomachs. I invite him to “pray for those who persecute”. I ask him to hold his employer in the light, releasing the untenable relationship to God’s wisdom. He is not to speak words or seek to change his employer. Several months later, the young man and his family respond to the invitation of co-ownership of a company in the Denver area. He tells me that “holding in the light” enabled him to let go of one dream in order to claim a new one. The act of praying for an enemy changes him. In giving his employer to God, he breaks the man’s hold on his self-esteem and sees a more benevolent future. When we have raged long enough, God softens our hearts. When we have cried out for vengeance, God opens us to compassion. When we are willing to start our prayers wherever our hearts are, God moves within us so that we become obedient to Jesus’ command: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Alfred Lord Tennyson once said, “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.” And it is only at the end of this world, when by God’s grace, we will see face to face and understand all that has come to pass, that we shall realize how the destinies of persons and nations have been shaped by the quiet, silent, irresistible prayer of persons the world will never know. Let it be so. May we gather with disciples in the light of your Kingdom, saying, “And they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We have never seen anything like this.’” Amen. |