Family Service Sunday 27th July – led by Anne Walton
Well it was an ‘All-Woman Show’ this week, as befitted the day of the Women’s Euro Final in Basel – our own Lionesses?
Of course, Anne and Janet are well played-in (except perhaps with lighters?), but for Jenny Blumsen doing the Reading, it was a ‘first’. Congratulations Jenny, you can be assured it will not be the last!
Jenny’s Reading from Luke 11 was about Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray. He also seemed to be saying that God would give us everything we wanted, provided we bothered him sufficiently in our prayers. So Anne had quite a ’tricky wicket’ with her Reflection about prayer.
Anne started us off going window shopping with her Granny in preparation for Christmas but moved on swiftly to Internet shopping. That could cause problems, with deliveries going astray or seriously delayed. And what we’d seen on screen might have looked good, but when we opened the package and saw it, we realized it didn’t match our expectations, and we had to go to the bother of sending it back. How did we respond? Well, we might be angry, disappointed, and might lose faith in whatever shop or organization with which we’d placed our order. It seemed to Anne that Internet shopping was not so different to prayer.
When our prayers appeared to go unanswered some of us might get angry, some would feel hurt or betrayed by God. Some might even lose faith in God or leave the church altogether. Sometimes we’d ask and receive, seek and find, knock, and the door would open for us, but Anne had had had quite a few people ask her why their prayers weren’t answered.
Anne didn’t know why some prayers were answered but others went unanswered. She didn’t have any good answers or explanations – but had heard some really bad ones – such as, “You didn’t pray hard enough”, or “You didn’t have enough faith”. She could neither believe nor accept an explanation like that. It was wrong, it hurt people, and it promoted an incorrect understanding of who and how God was. And she remembered that a certain man had prayed on a Thursday night, “Father, if you will, take this cup of suffering away from me. Not my will, but your will be done”. And he’d been crucified the following afternoon.
Anne didn’t really understand how prayer worked, but she did know that it was not about what we wanted. It was not a mechanical process, a transaction. And it was not the transmission of information to God. God already knew what we were telling him. So in the midst of not understanding, maybe the most and the best we could do was to echo that disciple’s request, “Lord, teach us to pray”.
Jesus’s response had not been an explanation of prayer or how it worked. He’d taught about who and how God was. We were His divine children, sons and daughters. Even before we opened our mouths the relationship already existed. Prayer was all about relationship and presence. When we prayed, we were remembering God’s presence, His love, generous compassion, forgiveness, wisdom, justice, and mercy. God actually gave Himself. God Himself was the answer to our every prayer.
Jesus told us, “As bad as you are. You know how to give good things to your children. How much more would a Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who asked him”.
Perhaps the greatest difficulty of prayer was that sometimes we just wanted to ask for something and receive it. We wanted God to change our circumstances. Well God could sometimes change our circumstances, but Anne was increasingly convinced that God more often changed us, rather than our circumstances. God’s self-giving, sustained, nourished, changed and strengthened us – empowered us, emboldened us, and enabled us to face the circumstances of our lives.
We did so sometimes with joy and gratitude, other times with pain and with loss, but always with God.
On her better days, Anne knew this, and that was enough. And on those other days?
Well, it was, “ Lord, teach me to pray”, remembering Jesus’ words, “Thy will be done, not mine”.
Potters Bar United Reformed Church 