Life is (not) a beach

My son Torben, my niece, and their respective young families just returned from a week-long trip to Mexico on Thursday night. The day before they came back, I texted my daughter-in-law and asked if they were ready to come home, or if they were just getting into the swing of things.

She was quite happy to be heading home, she responded, adding in all-caps,  "It’s been a LONGG WEEK!"  I think that while good times were definitely being had, the four parents had also learned that travelling with a five-year-old, a three-year-old, and two babies under one was not generally conducive to a relaxing holiday getaway.

I texted back. "Well, you gave it the old college try! Memories were no doubt made, for good or for ill!" And she immediately replied, "Oh, don't worry, I’ll be doing this bi-annually, lol!"

I had to admire her commitment to travel - one, I know, which is shared by many, but not so much by me. Had I been in her beach sandals my own takeaway from a week punctuated by rainstorms and unscheduled crocodile appearances would likely be summed up as: "Been there, done that, next time I’m staying home."

The true traveller, however, understands and accepts that one’s own plans are often overturned by weather, chance, arguments, flight delays, hotel mix-ups, disappointed expectations, illness, labour strikes, and any number of other factors. But, still, they persevere in their adventures, accepting that dashed hopes are an inevitable part of the journey. They continue to trust that, ultimately, their ongoing travels will both shape and reward them in ways they can’t always predict.

And so it is with the life of prayer. This week all of our lectionary readings encourage us to reap the rewards that come from persevering in faith through good times, bad times, and all the in-between times. Jeremiah talks about a time when we will no longer have to teach each other about God, because God’s law will be woven right into every heart. The psalmist lists the benefits of meditating on God’s law all the day long, finding strength in its wisdom even while surrounded by enemies. In the letter to Timothy, we are counselled to proclaim the gospel message in both favourable and unfavourable circumstances, even when that means persevering through suffering. And then Jesus caps it off by telling us to pray always, and not to lose heart, because it is through persistence that our prayers will be answered.

But just a minute, I hear you say. Sure, hanging on to our faith through thick and thin will ultimately shape us for the better. But I’ve persisted with plenty of prayers that haven’t been answered at all, let alone promptly. So what gives with that promise, Jesus?

This is one of those many times when it is helpful to consider a passage in conjunction with other stories in the Bible, and through the lens of the entire narrative of scripture. When we do that, we are reminded that life with God does not mean an end to suffering; in fact, following in Jesus’ footsteps means taking on hardships that we might otherwise choose to avoid. It means feeling even more keenly others’ pain and sorrow, and sharing the sometimes-unending weight of it in our hearts.

Jesus himself, though he prayed that the cup of suffering be taken away from him, left it in God’s hands and accepted that it was a prayer that would likely go unanswered in the way that he hoped. So I don’t think this parable is meant to portray God as a vending machine that will spit out the snack of your choosing if you just put enough coins in. I think Jesus is challenging us to retain firm trust in a God who does hear us, and will act to help us - though we may never know exactly how, nor exactly when.

But sometimes, when life is very hard, we do want to know exactly how, and exactly when. We yearn to know why many of our most fervent prayers seem to go unanswered. There are many reasonable-sounding responses to that question; at the same time, I imagine no response is likely to fully comfort or satisfy a hurting heart. All the same, here are some things we can remember if we ever do start to question the value of prayer.

The first may be to consider the untold number of times our prayers are answered, and we didn’t even notice. We all want our friends and loved ones to be healthy and happy. What we will never know are the myriad times that a single, start up cancer cell may have been destroyed by a body’s immune system before it could spread and turn into disease. We don’t know about the times turning right rather than left avoided a collision on the road. We don’t know that a seemingly inconsequential decision made in the past will have taken us, or someone else, on a path away from an unfulfilling job, a destructive relationship or an unhealthy habit. The parents of the four young cyclists who recently blew through a red light at a busy Lynn Valley intersection, cutting in front of my car and many others will, I expect, never learn how truly blessed they were that all their kids arrived safely home that dark evening. Everyday miracles occur on a plane of existence that is usually inperceptible. More prayers are answered before we even get out of bed in the morning than we could possibly comprehend.

We can remember, too, that the vast, complex web of life in which we live is carefully balanced to offer the means by which all Creation might grow and thrive. We have learned that when we carelessly or arrogantly break strands of that web, the consequences can reach far beyond what we ever intended or imagined. So, too, asking God to step outside the natural laws of the Earth in big ways or small ways, to grant miraculous healings or intervene in weather patterns, is not to be taken lightly. And that’s before we even stop to factor in how many prayers emanating from this human family of ours must contradict each other, and what chaos might result if they were all answered!

When we wrestle with the question of unanswered prayer, we must recognize that much of our suffering stems from the exercise of our free will. As individuals and societies, we make choices that bring illness, unhappiness, and pain to ourselves or, worse, to others. The pain may have been inflicted purposely, thoughtless, or entirely unintentionally - we have all heard of useful medicines, for example, that were only later found to have terrible longterm side effects. I would guess there are very few painful situations that are not caused or at least magnified by the exercise of free will, ours or someone else’s.

It is written that we are made in the image of God, and that our free will was God’s irrevocable gift to us in the Garden of Eden. It’s a gift that few of us would want humanity to relinquish. But while Isaiah cried out for a future time in which people will beat their swords into ploughshares, too often we choose to turn our ploughshares into swords. With God’s help, we can at times clean up a mess we’ve made - but we can’t avoid suffering its consequences in the meantime, our best prayers notwithstanding.

And the flip side is also true: we may freely choose to open our hearts to others, to pursue relationships, to learn more about a stranger who then becomes a friend. That’s a godly use of our free will, to be sure - but one that will also bring the pain of losing loved ones, or sharing in a friend’s suffering.

This week I was reading a book on unanswered prayer called "God on Mute," written by Pete Grieg. He referenced a study out of the University of Wisconsin in which participants had to sit with their feet in a bucket of freezing water. Researchers found that people who had a companion alongside them could withstand the pain twice as long as those who suffered alone. Prayer is a means by which God can companion us; it’s also the means by which we can accompany others and help them endure what might otherwise be unendurable.

Myriad books, of course, have been written on prayer over the centuries, but despite the collective wisdom of sages and theologians we will never fully understand how or when prayer works. And that’s OK.  The older I get, the more I appreciate there are things I am not in charge of and am not compelled to understand.

Scripture tells us that when we don’t know how to pray, the Spirit intercedes for us in prayers that are too deep for words. And for over a thousand years our worship services have begun with the Collect for Purity, in which we assert that to God all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden.

Even when we trust God to know us better than we know ourselves, though, we still, instinctively, put words around our prayers and send them heavenward. Why is that, if God already knows our wants and needs? Well, as I read this week, "love always seeks to communicate" — we with God, and God with us. It is through this attentive communication that our relationship with God deepens.

Over time, our persistence in prayer increasingly helps us carry God’s presence in a way that impacts all of those around us. In my circle of family and friends, there are avid churchgoers, atheists, and agnostics of various stripes.I do think that all of them, in different ways, would feel unsettled if I suddenly renounced by faith and said it was all foolishness. Perhaps unknowingly, we who pray carry the torch for many who have not yet found a home for their own hopes and worries.

In the 16th chapter of John’s gospel, we read that a number of followers fell away from Jesus when his teachings become too challenging. Jesus asks the twelve disciples if they, too were planning to leave him. Peter responds with what feel to me like some of the truest worlds in the whole of scripture: "Lord," he says, "to whom would we go?"

Indeed, despite any disappointments, despite our questions, our lack of understanding, our prayers that go unanswered: where else would we go? I agree with Pete Grieg when he writes:

Life sometimes hurts like hell but I’ve discovered that deleting God from the equation doesn’t actually help. It merely removes all meaning and morality from the mess, and all real hope for the future.

The psalmists learned that long ago. Many of the Hebrew psalms turn sharply from being a song of lament to a song of praise; not because any of the psalmist’s earthly troubles have ended, but because it is from within them that they sense most keenly that humanity’s flawed existence must surely give way to a world in which God’s beauty, truth and goodness prevail.

This is God’s dream for the world, too, and  Jesus tells us that our persistent prayers help keep God’s dream alive, in this time and for all time. Each of our Amens is a vote for God’s love and mercy to roll down like water, so in this world when so many need to hear it, we say it again: Amen, and Amen.

(Photo above by Pedro Monteiro on Unsplash)