Some Thoughts on Prayer
The opening prayer of our funeral liturgy includes these words: “O Lord, You are always more ready to hear us than we are to pray; and You know our needs before we ask, and our ignorance in asking.”
As the years have gone by, I have found these words an ever greater source of comfort in my own life. As is the case for many believers I think, maturation in the faith has not brought with it better skills in praying but a palpable awareness of how short my prayers (and overall prayer life) still fall of any sort of exemplary standard. Were someone to ask me what a model prayer looks like, I would hardly point them to my own!
However, I find great peace in knowing that prayer itself is not meant to be an expression of my skill (or even my faithfulness) but a recognition of God’s Fatherly goodness and lovingkindness. We pray, in other words, not to show off to God, but to commune with God – and we should not miss the clear connection between “communing” and “communicating.” Communication is the outgrowth of communion.
God has given us prayer as a way of drawing near to Him, just as our communication – particularly our most meaningful conversations – draws us into close contact and communion with our friends and loved ones. Put differently, just as our best human conversations are expressions of and participation in the reality of human communion and fellowship, prayer expresses and draws us into the fellowship and communion of who God is and what He’s doing. In a very real sense, prayer allows us to reach out and touch God at the same time that God is reaching out and touching us. Our prayers do not create this communion, rather they are its expression and manifestation: like the sacraments, prayer reveals what is otherwise invisible but still very real. By prayer, we declare and display our trust that God has claimed us and desires to hear us. By prayer, we literally turn toward the God who has turned toward us, like a mother who turns toward her children.
This is also why we can confidently pray that God is always ready to hear us when we cry out and knows our needs long before we voice them. Just as our children’s voices do not create in us the desire to be a parent or the innate sense of what is best for them in life, but simply tap into the parental instinct that is already there; in the same way, prayer itself is the proof of God’s own parental instinct and inclination. Our prayers do not awaken a God who otherwise ignores us, nor do they or enlighten a God otherwise ignorant of our joys and sorrows. Prayer reveals God’s interest in us, and expresses our confidence that His eye is always on us (Psalm 121:5-8) and His ear forever turned toward us (Psalm 65:2).