prayer

How do we manage the pressure to worry and despair about what is going on in the world?

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There is so much that we can see that is worrying, and that we can do nothing about.  (As I write this Los Angeles is suffering intense wildfires, Trump is threatening to take over Greenland, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are still taking lives, global temperatures continue to rise…)  Yet if we didn’t look at our TVs, papers or phones we would know nothing of this – and surprisingly little is ‘in our face’ – we are not directly affected by most of the list above.

The secret is to realise that we are not God.  These things are beyond our power to control, but we are not helpless or hopeless – we can play our part using the prayer that Jesus taught us:

“May Your kingdom come; may Your will be done on earth – as it is in heaven”

We might reflect that what is going on actually is God’s will; his permissive will.  Throughout history greedy, power hungry bullies have oppressed ordinary people and we have ransacked the natural world.  Jesus was fully aware of the brutal Roman regime, but he didn’t overthrow it.  He healed people, focusing on the individuals around him – and we can do that too.  We can pray the Lord’s prayer and leave the state of the world in his hands, but then get on with interacting with those around us according to his will.  We don’t care less about the global situation, but we can worry less. And we can use our energy to influence our local communities instead.

After putting the world’s troubles in God’s hands, the Lord’s prayer allows us to ask for God’s heap meeting our own needs:  give us our food for the day, forgive our sins (as we forgive), don’t let us yield to temptation, save us from evil.  All of which do personally affect us day by day, and which will allow us to fulfil our daily purpose.

Jesus’ prayer is a powerful gift from God.

“Forgive me my sin, as I forgive those who sin against me.”

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Think about this carefully.  It is the route to national and individual healing.

If we are a wealthy banker and are angry and unforgiving of those who voted for Brexit, then this prayer gives the Brexit voter permission to be angry and unforgiving of us, as we maintain the system of oppression of the poor.  The country tears in two, hatred spreads and we are all worse off.

If we are poor and homeless and are unforgiving of the uncaring nature of those who are financially safe, then that gives those in power no incentive to change the situation.  And we can expect to be punished for any bad behaviour on our part.

If we are unforgiving of less than perfect service from (say) hospital A&E, teachers, or waiters then we can expect no forgiveness when we fall short of perfection in our work.

If we cannot forgive our friends or family when they say or do something that upsets us, then we must be perfect in our behaviour towards them.

The prayer asks that we are forgiven in the same way that we forgive others.  If we cannot forgive others, we must maintain the same demand for perfection in ourselves; a demand that we will never be able to live up to.  If we want to free ourselves from feelings of guilt or inadequacy, we must choose to forgive others first for their shortcomings, and then we can know then that we are forgiven.

A morning prayer for the wealthy

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Dear Lord,

Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

Thank you for bringing me safely through another night and for the promise of a new day.
Thank you for blessing me with health, wealth and good friends, and thank you for my family.

Thank you for the blessings that I can bring to others. Forgive me please for the times when I have not acted as you would wish, and please strengthen and encourage me to carry out your will in the future. Guide my steps to places and people who I can bless, and form in my heart the desire and will to be that blessing. Let me feel joy at the good that I have been able to do in your name.

It is hard to be joyful when there is evil confronting us each day, sustained by misguided beliefs and the cold hard hearts of so many.

Yet all good things come from you and are part of you, so please help me to know you, love you and enjoy your presence. Please lift my spirit to worship and praise you, and to appreciate your gifts to me. Please be present with me every moment of the day and night, filling me with your goodness and keeping me from harm. Please protect those who I love, and heal those who are suffering in body, mind and spirit.

In this cruel and selfish world, I ask that you work in all people to draw us to love you with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love our neighbour as ourselves.

Please correct the growing culture of inequality where we, your children, believe others to be less important and valuable than we are. Help us to see each human being as our brother or sister, parent or child, and to love them as such.

Father, let your spirit drench this land as the wind and rain of winter. Convince the people in this nation of your existence, bring us to see our sin, and to repentance and forgiveness. Draw us close to you.

And please mould your church to feed us with the bread of life and to help us praise you as you deserve. Please remove the barriers that we put in the way of people who would follow you, forgive our mistakes and guide our actions to properly serve you and those we live among.

I ask all this in Jesus’ name, for I believe and trust that this is your will.

Amen

Goodness – me!

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Do you ever stop to think what you would like on your gravestone when you are dead?  It’s a good way of finding out what we really want to be like.  I don’t think any of us would like to see phrases like:

“Always selfish and greedy”

“Never had time for anyone else”

“Vindictive and hateful”

When we see a new baby, at a christening who would want to think that the baby would grow up to be a thief, or to have a string of husbands who she cheated on and deserted, or to be a child molester.

We know deep down that we want to be good.

In the 11th century, Anselm of Canterbury described how being good is possible through ‘goodness’, and how supreme goodness is God.  So that desire to be good is actually us wanting to be like God (supreme goodness), to act like God, to be in his image.

St John’s describes in his gospel that God is love.  So when we love one another, our love is possible through love, which is through God.  We are choosing to act like God, to be part of God.

Each of us has the essence of goodness in us, and the essence of love in us.  God is goodness and God is love, so we all have God within us.  Sometimes we choose to ignore goodness and love, and instead choose to be selfish, vindictive or hateful.  But that is not what we want to be – as we found at the start of this post.

The true Christian religion is about helping us to be what we want to be – good and loving.  It is about connecting with that goodness and love within us; God within us.  It is about learning from Christ what goodness and love looks like, and trying to imitate him.

And if you want to be good and loving, then that means that you want to be like God.  Jesus said that ‘if you have seen me then you have seen God’; Jesus represented supreme goodness and love in human form.  So if you want to be good and loving, since Jesus was supremely good and loving, then you want to be like Jesus, and if you want to be like Jesus you can call yourself a Christian.

Christians pray to help make that connection with goodness and love.  Here’s an example of a Celtic prayer from Lindisfarne:

Help me dear Lord to care too much

To love too freely

To pray unceasingly

To forgive endlessly

To laugh fearlessly

To question

To live

To be who I am

To be where I am

To be what I am

To hope

To believe

To reach out my hand

That’s a good prayer, isn’t it?  It’s about connecting with God within us.  It’s asking God to help us be who we want to be.

Do you want to be the sort of person that the prayer describes?  You can take a step closer by praying that prayer.

Related posts

https://philhemsley.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/an-argument-for-and-definition-of-god/

https://philhemsley.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/the-god-of-science/

 

Can God answer prayer in a universe that operates according to the laws of physics?

/ Minimalist Christian / 9 Comments

We believe that the universe operates according to the laws and equations of physics.  And then we ask, “if the behaviour of the universe is predictable according to the laws of physics, then is there any way in which God can ‘do’ anything; how can God answer prayer?”

Perhaps in the same way that we ‘do’ things?  As I type this, I am influencing the material world with my mind, with my will.  Although we all speculate based on different quantities of data, nobody knows how we do it.  We can trace pathways through the brain, down nerves and so on, but we still don’t know how ‘we’ operate with free will or exercise that free will.

Some claim that we don’t, that free will is a delusion.  But they don’t really believe it – we all behave as if we have a degree of free will.  Clearly we don’t decide everything our bodies do, but we still do decide some things.  We exercise our free will daily.  How could it be otherwise?  If free will were a delusion, then if we were truly able to believe that it were an illusion we would realise that there is no point to anything at all and we would give up all our searchings, all our science, all our religion  Yet we would not be able to give it up, because we would not have the free will to be able to!  And if someone claims that free will is a delusion, how have they come to that conclusion?  If they are correct then clearly they cannot have come to the conclusion themselves, but only had the delusion of coming to that conclusion …. So the claim that freewill is a delusion is contrary to all evidence, and by as outlined above completely un-provable.  It is outside of science and outside of reason.  Therefore if pursuit of the truth is to have any meaning then we must conclude that we have free will.

So in the same way that we, with our free will  can operate in the material world, controlled by the laws of physics, God too can operate.  There is thus no scientific reason to suppose that God cannot answer prayer. (If he exists of course!)