Unanswered Prayer (2)

 

As I write these words, it occurs to me that there is a similarity between questions of prayer and developing a reasonable Biblical theodicy; both have mystery, both have temporal loose ends, both look toward the consummation of all things in Christ, both have tension, both should cause us to fall on our faces.

 

Perhaps we should say, “Go and find out what it means to die with Christ, to take up your cross following Him; then come back and let’s talk.”

 

After all, the only answer regarding unanswered prayer, if we must give an answer, is to know Christ and Him crucified.

 

(Anyone who has ever been in a Bible study with me, or who has worked for me, knows that I seldom give direct answers. Yes, it is painful for people, and they can become frustrated or angry, but when they get the idea behind the method they start not only fishing themselves, but teaching others how to fish. By the same token, I have seldom preached a message that had closure – thanks to Scott Gibson and Haddon Robinson.)

 

When I have been asked about prayer passages, such as those in John, I don’t recall having ever answered anyone in the Way I would love to. I recall starting to answer and then stopping, realizing that nothing I can say (along the lines of what I’ve been writing) will really matter. O I am sure I’ve said something about our Father desiring deep relationship with us, and that He and our Lord Jesus desire to walk with us through the vicissitudes of life, and I have pointed others to Psalm 23 and asked them to spend a few weeks meditating on the psalm, and surprisingly some folks actually do it and their lives begin to change and it becomes a stepping stone to the Living Stone. But the foregoing is about as much as the average person can absorb.

 

You know (of course!) who “gets” this, and they are the grandmothers of previous generations, women of your mother’s generation…and maybe they are the last bastion of the church. These are the people who have taught me and been patient with me, especially when I have been quite dumb and stupid. They have lived in the shelter of the Most High, they have known what it is to abide in the Vine.

 

While I often lament the fact that I was pretty much a feral Christian, with no older man, or men, taking me under his wing, spending time with me, working with me; the other side of the coin is that an older friend did introduce me to Chambers, Murray, Lewis, Tozer, Bonhoeffer; and my friend George Will also lived what he introduced me to, which was 1 Cor. 1:17 – 31, abiding in the Vine “without Me you can do nothing,” and Galatians 2:20. Therefore, Job’s words, “Thou He slay me, yet will I trust Him,” have been with me since a teenager…whether I really knew (do I even know now?) what they mean or not. My call from Christ, to Christ, was very much through Mark 8:34ff.

 

I think the foregoing has meant that I have accepted unanswered prayer not so much as unanswered prayer, but as part of the package, the process, the dying and rising, the mystery. I don’t mean “accepted” in the sense of disengagement or passivity, for I continue to pray and intercede for others over the course of decades.

 

It is hard, for me at least, to see unalleviated suffering, to witness premature death, to encounter violent and unexpected death. We all have our stories. The pastor who went before me in MA walked with a Dad who lost his wife in childbirth. I was soon faced with a mom of four-year old twins who was dying of cancer – one Saturday the town gathered around their home and held hands and prayed for her (yes, the town)…and she still died…I still had a funeral to officiate…we prayed and prayed and prayed…and Martha died anyway. Why? O why? I know you have your own stories…if we care and love and serve we have stories…don’t we?

 

But, and this is really just me, I don’t think I have ever thought, “Well, God did not answer that one.” I’m not saying this is the way it should be, I don’t know…I realize we are all a bit different, so I don’t know about others, not even those who are the closest to me – I seem to realize that more now than ever. I see prayer and intercession as part of life, as a Way of living, as a journey into the ineffable and numinous…and what can I do but trust Him?

 

On the one hand Jesus prays that the cup will pass if possible, it doesn’t appear to pass, and yet the writer of Hebrews tells us that His cries were heard – what do we do with that?

 

Do we know about Romans 8:26 – 27? I think passages such as this are experienced but not much spoken of by those who know the experience; and that those who speak a lot about these passages likely have little experience with them. These passages will cost us our lives, Colossians 1:24 and 2 Corinthians 4:12 will cost us our lives.

 

And so in a sense back to the scope of John chapters 13 – 17, for if I take anything and separate it from the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ, then I have severed it from the Tree of Life…whether it is marriage, family, prayer, baptism, even the Bible.