Weekly THIS AND THAT for March 14, 2010: Prayer As a Lifeline

This and That:
Prayer As a Lifeline


“Where Were You God, When I Needed You?”

We all are familiar with the story of the man alone in his home and threatened by an impending hurricane and flood. His neighbor Sam comes by and warns him to evacuate. The man states that he’ll put his trust in the Lord. The rains and the wind come and the water rises quickly – one foot, two feet, and it’s now flooding the living room. A rescue team in a rowboat passes by living room winder and warns him that the worst of the hurricane is still to come. Again, the man proclaims, “I’m going to put my trust in the Lord!” “Have it your way,” they respond and quickly row away. The water level continues to rise and the man is driven to the second floor to keep dry, and then to the attic, and eventually he finds himself on the roof! A helicopter comes and circles the house, “We’ll throw you a rope ladder!” “Never mind,” he shouts back over the noise of the rotating blades. But even now it is too late and the man goes under.
At the pearly gates he asks God, “Where were you, Lord? I placed all my trust in you and you let me drown.” “Where was I?” God proclaims, “I came to you in your neighbor Sam, the rescue team in the rowboat, and the guys in the helicopter! Where was I? The question is where were you!”

Prayer is about communication: God’s presence to us and our experience of God’s presence. If that is how we choose to define prayer, then we may, as the man in our story, be missing both – the presence of God in our lives and our experience of him. “Where are we?” is the right question. This past Friday, Session 4 of our Lenten Family Fridays, was about how to plug into an experience of God and how to see God in everything we do.


Why Is Luke Important for Us?

Over the course of our six-weeks, we are considering the Gospel of St. Luke and how he, in his own way, helps us communicate and experience God as Luke knows him. Luke was a non-Palestinian writing to a non-Palestinian audience that was largely made up of Gentile Christians, like us. The prologue of the Gospel makes it clear that Luke is not part of the first generation of Christian Disciples, but is himself dependent upon the traditions he received from those who were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, again, like us. No gospel writer is more concerned with the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus and the Christian disciple, with the importance of prayer, or Jesus’ concern for women. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus sets the example – all contemporary issues of our own day.

Luke shows us the centrality that prayer was for Jesus. Jesus worships with others in the synagogue at Nazareth and yet he withdraws for prayer at critical moments in his life. The Disciples turn to prayer and praise after Easter as a way of life. Jesus warns the Disciples in the Garden that they would have to pray in order to be spared testing and is a daily reminder of the last petition of the Lord’s Prayer. Yes, prayer is central to Jesus’ life and ministry; it also needs to be for ours and Luke is the right person to help us understand Jesus in this regard.


Prayer in the Gospel of Luke

When we pray, what happened at Jesus’ baptism happens to us, heaven opens and tells us who we are and what our task is. Together with Jesus we belong to the same life source, the same family. When Christians were asked, “Why do you live that way?” they replied that they had been inspired by the Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus. When asked, “How did you contact that Spirit?” their answer was “in prayer.” Luke became convinced that prayer was also the key to understanding Jesus and empathizing with his life and his mission. For Luke, Jesus is a person of prayer. Prayer guides his life. It is while at prayer that he makes his decisions. He prays at his baptism, when tempted in the desert, when choosing the twelve, at his Transfiguration, in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest, and on the cross. Asking for the Holy Spirit, inviting that kind of contact with God, means playing with fire. In prayer we, like Jesus, come to know who we are, come in contact with ourselves and realize what is asked of us. This is what happened to Jesus when he prayed: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me: yet not my will but yours be done” (22:42) When we pray, “Give us each day our daily bread,” do we ever think about the missions and millions of starving people in our world? If we restrict that “us” to only ourselves, do we not escape the consequence of that prayer?


Parables on Prayer

In his four parables on prayer Jesus teaches us not so much what to pray for, but how to pray.

➢ 1st In the Friend at Midnight, a request for something to eat for an unexpected guest suggests that we should approach God as our friend no matter what the inconvenience (12:4)

➢ 2nd The Unjust Judge is a parable (18:1-8) about a widow who asks an unjust judge to do her justice. He refuses to help her, but the widow does not give up, and the judge gives in quickly. It teaches us that with our requests of God we should be just as persistent and persevering.

➢ 3rd Asking As of a Parent is a parable in which Jesus compares the one whom we address in prayer to a parent who is good to his children, giving them what they ask for (11:9-13)

➢ 4th The Pharisee and the Tax Collector (18:9-14) has two individuals going up to the temple to pray. The moral is “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Luke is clearly the Gospel of Prayer. He shows Jesus at prayer at all the great moments of his life. That should be testimony enough for how prayer must be part of our daily lives as well.


A Paradigm for Daily Prayer

1 Minute

➢ Stretch
➢ Relax
➢ Breathe deeply

4 minutes

➢ Spiritual Passage
➢ Psalm or
➢ Hymn

10 minutes

➢ Awareness rather than Thinking
➢ Maintain Awareness using breathing and phrase

5 minutes

➢ Writing
➢ Sharing insights with others

Over time the writing (journal entry becomes a record of your transformation.)
The following little paradigm for 20 minutes of daily prayer was shared and demonstrated.

Fondly,
Father Nicholas