I am reading Two Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage by Madeleine L'Engle. It's the beautiful story of her and her husband meeting, marrying, and sharing life together for 40 years. As she writes, her husband is in the hospital battling cancer. I am about half way through the book.
As she reflects on someone else's assertion of how we understand God and how we pray in the midst of pain, she writes:
"He also writes that there are prayers that one is not allowed to pray, such as 'Please, dear God, don't let it be cancer.' Rabbi Kushner says I can't pray that way, because right now either it is cancer or it is not. But I can't live with that. I think we can pray. I think the heart overrides the intellect and insists on praying. If we don't pray according to the needs of the heart, we repress our deepest longings. Our prayers may not be rational, and we may be quite aware of that, but if we repress our needs, then those unsaid prayers will fester."
I think I agree with her. Our view of God shapes how we pray, and yet, there are moments when our hearts cry out our deepest longings, whether or not those prayers match what we claim we believe about who God is and how God acts.
I have often worried when I have prayed in public that my prayers reflect an incorrect theology. So I pray timidly in front of congregations. But why not just pour out our hearts to God? Why this guarded safety net? No, God may not answer the way we wish He would, but there are moments when we just have to free those deep cries from the control we try to keep on them.
On the other hand, there are also times--maybe after we have allowed our yearnings to be poured out to God--that we also have to pray "not my will, but yours be done."
Prayer is a journey.
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The way that I have generally heard about prayer is that since God wants a personal relationship with him (and hopefully we do to) that we can come before Him and really say anything, even if we are doubting what we believe. I think this is true, but never-the-less I believe we still have to maintain a humble attitude. So it is hard to specify to which degree our prayers should be; totally open and focused almost on ourselves, or completely formal an inintimate.
As a side note, this book I'm reading says that since God gave humanity dominion over creation (Gen. 1:26-27) that for God to interfere and work within the world, He has to come through us in a sence. We have to invited God in by our prayers. So understanding this notion reveals that we as Christians are required to pray. But the 'catch' is that God only acts/answers His will; so how do know what God's will is in our lives and of those around us?
(Sorry if this was completely random)
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