Forgive me for dipping into current events. Today’s New York Daily News blasts out on the Front page that “God isn’t fixing this,” and highlights four quotes of Republican leaders who send “prayers” to the victims of the San Bernardino shootings.
All my life I’ve tried to find ways to reduce gun violence hoping against hope that our leaders would find common ground and balance on the issue of gun control, but I find the Daily News mockery of God and prayer troubling.
Prayer for me is a relationship with God where there are equal parts listening and speaking, times of comfortable silence, and is not about receiving things or answers to questions. For example, my conversation this morning was about my fear that the event in California would be used to further bigotry in our country, and my fear that the victims of this tragedy would be lost and forgotten against the background of political agendas. If the Daily News is an example my fears seem to be well founded.
Kathleen Norris says “prayer is not asking for what we think we want, but asking to be changed in ways we cannot imagine.” Philip Yancey writes, “The value of persistent prayer is not so much what we get what we want as that we become the person we should be.”
The question is not whether God answers prayers, but does God meet us in prayer. The answer to the latter is a resounding, “yes.”
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