Prayer as Listening

Let’s just get a few things on the table. The “listening” part of prayer is sometimes the most difficult part. When we pray to God, we do not always get an answer right back. Sometimes the silence is deafening. Sometimes the silence is frustrating. But for me what is even more frightening is when God does speak back to us: through the Scriptures, through other believers, through situations and events, or through creation.

First, the silence. The silence of God is something that I believe we need to grow increasingly accustomed to. When Elijah is on the mountaintop, running scared from Queen Jezebel, God does not come in the earthquake and wind and fire, but in the sound of sheer silence (1 Kings 19:12). The greatest answer to prayer, the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh, is done quietly, almost silently, as he is born in a manger in a small town: Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. As Jesus is tried and beaten and sentenced to death, the first Christians looked to Isaiah to describe what has happened: Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth (Isaiah 53:7). And the most deafening silence of God is the silence of God the Son on the cross: the silence following the words It is finished and the silence of tomb. This is all to say that while we may find silence uncomfortable and frustrating, apparently God does not. In fact, silence seems to be one of God’s preferred ways of communicating with us, his creatures.

Second, when God speaks. If the silence of God can be deafening and overwhelming, then when God speaks—watch out! Have you ever had the experience of being deep in prayer and God answering you clearly and concretely through God’s creation, through situations and events, through other believers, or through Scripture? For me, the most humbling is when God speaks to me clearly and directly through his Word. The experience is overwhelming. Author Marva Dawn speaks of it as “God moving the bookmarks” (in our Bibles): God speaking a clear word to us through the Scriptures we read.

This also is a word of challenge to us. Hearing God speak through the Scriptures involves us taking time to read them and pray them and digest them. Eat this scroll, God says to Ezekiel (Ezekiel 3:3). Watch out, though, God often does not say what we want to hear!

 Lord, we give you thanks for your silence. Help us to be still and know that You are God. Lord, we give You thanks for Your Word. May we listen when You speak to us through the Scriptures. Lord, we give You thanks for speaking to us through our brothers and sisters in Christ. You are far more generous with us than we deserve. Make us ready to listen and quick to respond to what You ask of us. In the Name of Jesus our Lord. Amen.


[This article will be published in the monthly newsletter of the congregation I serve. Once it published, you can view it through our website.]

A Columbus Day Reflection

Columbus Day, I imagine, is a non-holiday for most of us. It probably evokes one of three reactions:

1. a vague reference to history: "Oh yeah, that guy who discovered America,"

2. a grieving of his legacy: Columbus as a representative of white colonial imperialism (see this e-card circulating on Facebook and Twitter), or

3. a chance to complain about how bank and postal service employees get the day off while the rest of us have to work. [I'm sure it's not worth the grief they get all day the next day, by the way.]

May I suggest a fourth? Columbus as metaphor: for discovery, for taking risk, for striking out and doing something new--even at great personal cost. Even if the Queen is partially financing it.

I imagine most of us sail along on someone else's boat, someone else's ocean, using a corporate-logo-inlaid compass of someone else's creation. We put the sails up and down day after day and rarely ask, "Where is this thing going anyway?" or "Is this a journey worth spending even a part of my life on?"

So how would I suggest we celebrate Columbus Day? Open your notebook to a blank page or take out a clean legal pad and start to dream, start to plan, start to chart new courses.

And if the current ship you're on (or you own!) is not worthy of your mission, make plans to change (or jump) ship, sooner than later.