Further Up and Further In ...: What about when God DOES answer prayer?!

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

What about when God DOES answer prayer?!

Hallelujah, Salvation and Glory, Honor and Power unto the Lord, OUR God.

It seems to me that modern theology has taken over prayer. Rather than working from the concept that 'God answers prayer', we now come from the standpoint of 'what do we do when God doesn't answer prayer?'. I recently fell in love with a song by JJ Heller, in which the first words are 'I have unanswered prayers' ... and while I first resonated with the intention, I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion. Do I have unanswered prayers, or are they simply answered in a way I disagree with? Do I see the answers if they aren't where I'm looking for them? God is not as formulaic as we'd all like to believe, and is probably more creative than we give Him credit for. I wouldn't even know where to begin looking for answers with those two pieces in mind. Of course, this probably breaks down around terrible tragedies, when we pray for healing and it doesn't happen. Duly granted. But most of the time my prayers aren't focused on the tragic predicament of an impending death (though perhaps they should be? Hmmm ...).

All this is to say I have had prayers answered. I've heard about miracles from friends' prayers. I believe I've had miracles occur in direct relation to my prayers. I have come to understand that God is a faithful God, but I suppose some may say that is me choosing to appropriate good fortune with divine intervention. Maybe it's something like choosing to believe God is a faithful God, rather than testing my prayers on Him first. I'd rather just call it divine intervention, but whatever.

In any case, I sit here reflecting on answered prayer, primarily because I feel blessed. Overwhelmingly blessed. By my family, by my friends, by my opportunities, by my gifts, by everything in this moment. This does not mean my life is devoid of death, pain, loss, etc. But it means I do, today, choose to remember how good I have it, I choose to recall how God has been faithful, I choose to recognize that this cannot all be due to chance. And, that someone deserves quite a bit of gratitude. In my opinion, there is no way I brought this on myself. So, once again,

Hallelujah, Salvation and Glory, Honor and Power unto the Lord Out God.

3 comments:

Unknown said...: Interesting thoughts Becca, I wonder if you're thinking about Sunday's sermon?

I will certainly admit that I'm much more comfortable saying that "God hears prayer" than that "God answers prayer" - I think that's what you're getting at when you say that God answers prayer, but not necessarily in the way we expect.

You also wrote that this theology of prayer starts to break down around terrible tragedies. I think its not personal but global tragedies that are most problematic. Who has ever prayed more earnestly and fervently than a mother whose children are crying because they are hungry? For me the question is always: How can we say that God is faithful when there are people who are dying of hunger (or whose homes are demolished by natural disasters or whose bodies are violated by invading armies or who suffer in countless other ways)? I believe that God does hear us, that God can and does intervene. But I think the only way to avoid trivializing immense evil is to say that God's "answer" is Christ and his kingdom. God's answer is in a sense outside human history; it is the new heaven and the new earth. That promise is how we can talk about God's faithfulness in the face of seeming neglect.

Those are my thoughts. Heart you.; 6:51 AM
I am Kate Maxwell said...: Word, Becca.; 9:11 AM
Unknown said...: I really like this video. In it the speaker talks about how the prayer was seemingly answered wrong but in fact lead to the right thing. Give it a watch. http://www.mormonchannel.org/video/mormon-messages?v=2714780496001; 8:47 PM

I dreamed a dream ...

A place for documenting the strangeness that radiates my imagination while I slumber. Oddly enough it is not due to any medication, go figure ...

18Oct2010
It happened. I've reached a new ... low? I am currently taking a class about the Doctrine of God. We've recently been reading Thomas Aquinas, and discussing the simplicity of God. My dream the other night involved me going for a jog (which I never, ever, do ...) and during said jog I recall a conversation with my jogging buddy, in which I say, "Ah, so the fact that God is good supersedes my ability to comprehend His goodness." That is right. My subconscious is actively processing theology while I sleep.

11March10
In real life, my friend got married in January, but I was unable to attend. HOWEVER, in my subconscious, I dreamed that she redid the entire wedding for us on campus - it was half so we could be there, and half so it would be documented (photography and video) because they didn't do it the first time. WHAT a party.

11/04

Weirdest dream - we are in an alternate universe exactly the same as this one only different. You following? I feel like all the people from seminary here are with me, and we're in some sort of lodge that's out in the woods. It's huge, because it houses like, 400 people comfortably, but this isn't the weird part. We have to be very careful about venturing outside, because there are these evil people out there waiting for us - they want to trick us, manipulate us, and make us one of them. How do we tell who they are? They always come as sets of identical twins. The thing is we somehow all ended up here, and we're trying to get back to our world, so we need to get outside the lodge and search for the path back. But every encounter with these 'people' is SUPER risky, because they are very persuasive - like sirens (the mermaids, not the ambulance noises). It was scary/awesome/crazy.

10/10
IT HAPPENED. I dreamed I was a part of High School Musical live. Along with a couple of my friends here at PTS, we were some sort of dance ensemble extras, but I'll take what I can get. But what I do remember is something more along the lines of not actually being hired to do it, but they felt like they'd let me prance around pretending I'd be in it. In other words, I had no idea what I was doing, but while doing that no one kicked me out ...

22/10
My mom is always paranoid that I'm gonna get that flesh eating bacteria and my whole face will disintegrate. Well, I dreamed that I was checking out a scab that was on my leg, and realized that it had become quite a dent. THEN I saw that I had a scab on my ankle that was really quite deep (although healed, nothing gross, it was all just regular skin) that when I tried to see how deep it was I found out it went ALL THE WAY THROUGH MY FOOT and I could see out the other side. Straight through my ankle. I even caught a glimpse of bone. WEIRD.
I also had a brief dream about this show we were filming that was kind of a contest between nuns and cops - the cops had to run through this kind of supermarket area grabbing the things they would need on doing their rounds or whatever you call it. Since nuns don't really bring a lot of stuff with them on their ... rounds? more like they don't have those ... they had to run around grabbing beads and things for putting together necklaces and rosarys, only they had to attach them together using blue masking tape. The nuns were getting all mad because the cop's task was much easier, and much less tacky.

8/10 (that's october...)
I can't remember all the details, just that it was happening Indiana Jones/National Treasure style. We were doing some sort of ancient biblical treasure hunt (thank you seminary?) and I was traveling alongside this main guy (no idea who) who was dragging along with him two young boys. They had a special title, because they were like, kid geniuses. Innate sense of direction and ridiculously good memory for every kind of fact. The kind of person you want at trivia night. The guy was yelling at them, "Come on! you've got to remember the stuff from Leviticus!" ... ??? I have no clue. We're on some beach somewhere and I'm more or less tagging along for the ride because I think I was initially kidnapped, but now I'm like that girl in National Treasure who's just too curious to leave. I'm sitting on the bank, looking up at this sort of stone wall that runs parallel to the water (not into it) and I end up picking out one of the stones and when I turn it over ... hark a clue! It has a swastika sign on it (hello Indiana influence) with a halo above it ... I don't know how I feel about that, but in any case, I yelled, "I found something!" and then promptly proceeded to wake up ... boooooo.

16/6
Apparently we are family friends with Nelson Mandela. He came to stay at my house, which is a lot larger on the inside than I remember, and the backyard is absolutely enormous. I was also hosting a student group of African American students for a meeting at my house, who were delighted to have Nelson Mandela visit for a little while, and then he went to the kitchen to do some dishes ... I was also called racist by one of the students there because I had used the phrase 'What kind of people' when saying something like 'what kind of people would do such a thing?' which doesn't really sound racist but does ask the question do I categorize people by their actions more than
I should ... anyway, I wish I really did know Nelson Mandela, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't let him do the dishes ...

7/6
So I'm working at the INN in Seattle apparently, and Ryan Church asks me to make some sort of interactive deal as a part of his talk. He's preaching about prostitution and the dangers of selling sex or us buying into the current trends that just promote sex, so I decide to make a type of quiz that makes people aware of the way humans function in relation to the reality that 'sex sells' (in case you haven't read it, the book For Women Only has some eye opening facts and figures). He hands me a tape with parts of his talk already prepared, and we're talking VHS, but that doesn't even phase me I just go looking for a VCR. I find on in a common room somewhere, a TV/VCR set hanging from the ceiling and there are people socializing and eating in the room, but I just grab the closest thing to stand on (a miniature trampoline?) and move to put my tape in. I put it in and push play, and realize it isn't rewound as it's playing something taped off the TV, all in German. I rewind some more, and it is a clip from Oliver Twist (I don't think I've ever actually seen Oliver Twist) where Oliver is encouraging another orphan in the orphanage that they aren't stuck here for life, they can be whoever they want to be. This is communicated by the song my subconscious created, which I will entitle, 'You Can Be A Man'. This is what I woke up to - with it stuck in my head ... You can be a man, if you want make a plan, you can be a man ... I can sing it to you sometime if you want. I love that my subconscious is capable of writing songs, it gives me hope for my conscious ...

29/5 (I'm in Europe so I have to write it like that)
There was an ambulence running by outside our hostel this morning, and I think I dreamed that there was an airplane flying overhead that was losing pieces of itself all around us - but in my dream is more frustrating that scary. Like "really? it's losing chunks of airplane over MY street? can't it move one block over?" I am SO proud of my thoughtfulness of other people that may have been on the plane in my subconcious.

27/5
I was climbing a mountain with Bill and Claire and some other WSU students, only the mountain was pretty much a vertical pile of sand for most of the top, and you had to stick your arm in it and twist a little to get a good 'grip' in order to pull yourself up more and more. IT was CRAZy. But I got to the top with the rest of the.