2024-01-30 A Meditation on Prayer

“15 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” (Eph 1:15-23 ESV)

Being a prayer warrior comes with it both an aspect of submission to what spirit is speaking this hour, as well as an aspect of boldness, courageously to know our labors make a difference. We are indeed simplifying the arcane, or healing the solemn patient one or panic-stricken injured one, or attentively noting a meek, overlooked, one not fixated upon; the heights of man’s totem poles and mad rat race again give ample room to make a difference: the fields are white for the harvest (Jn 4:35).

Sleepwalking, trying to improve what calls on receptivity, the prayer warrior’s life automatically weighs this and that aspect, and it can require certain boldness to set out for the better portion. It can be an occasion really to go deep in our willingness to labor under the sun. It can be a certain gestalt sought but not always easily found, the prophetic gestalt and the teaching moment. We teach just out of how we have Received. We are stark and Grown, Accomplished and Bursting Forth in a world tawdry, miserable and damning. We in the final issue are indeed motors in a machine, dancing in a troupe, scarcely comprehending the words coming forth from our mouth.

There is therefore the daily pressure on us for the churches that Paul writes about (2 Co 11:28). Any one scrap of paper can illuminate sin, or can undo years of work, or can be all we are known for. Such are the ill balances of life, and such too is the appeasement and calm of a more stoic soul. There is time and place for each warrior, therefore, to look fondly on a future day, a day beckoning us, when we shall attain both to the joys of labor, and the joys of fellowship.

And it is no skin off our back the discovered authority in circular prayer wanderings. We discover in the very game of submission, the game of focus and making a difference. We hesitantly make suggestions or rather automatically, instinctively contributions. For, it is a measure of grace, the authoritative person or boss who simply lives side-by-side with his or her people, allowing, indeed encouraging, outbursts of thought or mental contributions unfazed, unafraid, spontaneous, off-the-cuff, and healing. It causes an onlooker to blanch or be horrified: where is the demonstration of submission and the walking on eggshells and the florid flattery, honor, reminder? Yet in due season we will make the right gesture, if that is what said onlooker awaits, of respectful duty and obedience. Only this, that some melting pot or competition or social admixture does reward the meticulous labors of each person, does give room to question authority, does cease to posit a rigid hierarchy. In this the warrior of prayer gleefully rises from the humility life has dished out, the training a bullying spirit has worked over the torridly handled or happenstance or wincing soul. We watch in newfound boldness as Christian deeds burst forth, bubble to the surface on that rare day; only this, that the day is no rare thing when once we’ve fixed purpose to gait and mission to the Hour, no longer in a rat race but overtly inspired by the sheer amount of work to be done. There is no time to cry over spilt milk nor the consuming years. There are simple gestures, in no wise comprehended or honored in that factual hour, in the matter of fact of what life dishes out; but still Onward, and Propositionally Astute, Bold and Judicious. To know of lightyears of work saved up, inherited, an outline or a reminder of the teachings of those gone before us, Law and Gospel, Grace the mentioned means of actually ending the forlorn outlook and diving right in to solve a few socially constructed puzzles.

And to have faith in the receptive nature of the warrior’s prayer stride, the faith it may be one opportunity out of the dozens seemingly afforded to our peers, to step up and say something. Yet we coach and inspire and blaze a trail for others even in simple receptivity of God’s love for us, even in simple astonishment of our own daily routine not meeting with scuffling feet and a downward bashful visage, but rather that God is with us in the valleys and the hills, God has made it His business to love on us, God has allowed us time and circumstance to progress and to bear humble outlook; in all these things no matter the social pressures, or the Lucifer-like guilt-trip. We savor something that defies explanation.

Therefore the starting gate is already the Victorious One. I can think of a dozen realms more ideal than this dastardly handcuffed or obstacle-ridden perch. I can focus on that meek Project, in respect for the amount of sheer obtuse un-Christian striving is going on on all sides. And I can do this with the right amount of pressure to perform, when for once that pressure is secondary to the always-at-the-ready transitioned and remade Lifestyle we walk in. Casting off burdens. Unapologetic exuberantly to celebrate the presence of a friend or family member. Unafraid of making errors or speaking out in flawed or shamed or generally accused ways. We are accused but not going back on this foundation. We are critiqued but not at tether’s end regarding simple courage to go gladly on. Praying, receiving, duty-bound, someone out there has thought of us this day in their prayers; someone has wished for us a better life; someone has outletted in our general direction the parental or confraternal revisions and daydreams and improvements of a solemn project we light upon.

That project is God with us. That project is some solvent, something forming actually soluble situations, dreaming big vis-a-vis our own effectiveness but especially the circumstances of our immediate world of loved ones. All this in our angular and misfit boxed out or misshapen form, malaise or rude protrusions, the ways we remain utterly creatures of bad mental habits (in the eyes of some) or otherwise holding too tightly to some barely encouraging hope. We therefore hope for a brighter tomorrow, one in which some rather simple facts—of being loved, of being effective, of making a difference—will overtake our doubts. We delight when having gone the full distance of the race, to find some place to outlet just exactly us in native form, unafraid to balk or to horrify or to falter. We lance forth bold and situated, ready in that confidence that we are Sons and Daughters. We can do nothing wrong, on some level God is boldly intervening and coaching and generating. He is redeeming fallen Man. He is using all things to point to the greater Glory of One Chosen and Sent Forth, to die a soldier’s death, to pray as though not decades but months remained of this His life. To anticipate a future doggedly prophesied and wished for as to its being a Good Future, a coming again in Glory, a military final Intervention; only do we still believe all these prophecies or do we go back to square one: outlandish deeds sadly hindering the rightful progress forward, broken spokes and wrenches in the wheels, heaven for some dear listeners but to much of the world a fear, financial insecurity, hunger, oppression, arrest, exclusion, failure? Failure towards those we hold dear. Failure to our own sense of “getting there”. Failure to allow for that patience and receptivity that is borne in Faith, in Certainty, in Walking the Line: God has gifts for us, and we find those because we have faced defeat and childhood training of a second childhood, to get along, to be undistracted, to forage forward because words can indeed heal and can indeed dry our forlorn eyes.

We are bold to go all-in. We are bold to roll with the punches and receive Gifts when all seems stark and unearned. We are bold to say “No matter” to the false hopes or hindrances or depression or existential angst. We are courageously letting ideas take their time, because there is something accomplished, and this in that strange counterweight of that Lucifer who always it seems will subtract substance. But who can hate? Only see for yourself, the wide fields for harvest.