Prayer and Helplessness

I do not have any ability or capacity that is miraculous or supernatural. The nearest I can say I come to this is that I know a supernatural being.

I do not have any ability or capacity that is miraculous or supernatural. I have no ability to influence the world beyond the reach of my effort or my words. The nearest I can say I come to the supernatural is this: I know a supernatural being.

The Creator is who I mean. Because God is greater than creation, including nature, he is (by definition) supernatural.

Yet even here, I know him through natural means. He became natural, became material, lived one human life within history, within time. I know something of God by inference from creation, from nature. But beyond this, and more specifically, I know who God is and what he wants because he revealed these things through a mortal life, his own life lived as a man, as recorded in real documents: letters and gospels we still read today.

And one small part of that revelation is how God, as a man, taught how to pray to God. That is, Jesus Christ taught about the practice of prayer, and about how far prayer goes.

I have no ability or capacity that is miraculous, no supernatural power. Maybe I wish I had it; I am not sure. In the absence of any power beyond my effort and words, I am often helpless. And in the depths of helplessness, I appeal to a loving Creator in the way his mortal incarnation taught human beings to pray.

I am left thinking about my helplessness when I encounter a particular phrase: “thoughts and prayers.” I am left wishing I could express or describe how helpless I am. We know this phrase; it is used in public announcements of sadness or tragedy as a way to offer a response when no other response seems available. The phrase implies an equivalence: You have your prayers and I have my thoughts. But there is no equivalence, because in this presentation, in this phrase, the thoughts are greater than the prayers.

The thoughts are greater. Because if one among us has the power to change things for the better through thinking a thought, has the power to positively address sadness or tragedy through mental focus alone, then that person does indeed possess what would seem to be a supernatural ability. This power, this tool, is more clearly and directly useful as a response to the tragic situation than the helplessness I must accept before surrendering to the Creator in prayer.

Does Prayer Work?

The assumption underlying “thoughts and prayers” is actually more subtle than the equivalence suggested above. I do not think that most people offering or receiving the phrase do directly and concretely experience that their thoughts have an active supernatural effect. Rather, the phrase is an appreciation that prayer, in some sense, likely does “work.” And if it does work, comes the question, then why does it work? An answer: Perhaps thought that is earnestly directed toward a need results in some kind of helpful signal or vibration we cannot detect. If this is the case, then perhaps other earnestly directed thoughts can produce this same signal or vibration without needing to experience it as prayer.

Here again, it is the full awareness of my helplessness that creates the gulf separating me from joining with this assumption. Does prayer ever work? Here is an answer: It does not work. That is, in the sense suggested—positively improving a situation that is prayed about—the prayer is not what works or does the work. If it did, we would credit the power of the one praying if an outcome was attained. But this is not where the power is. Prayer does not work, does not move or change anything, but rather God does.

This is a distinction that even those who pray struggle with, and struggle to understand. God has given us knowledge of God. God has redeemed his fallen creation and, in a different sense, is in the ongoing process of redeeming it. God has illuminated many souls within the world to join him in this work, to be part of, and to advance, what the Bible refers to (sometimes) as his “kingdom.” Those who see this and believe in this join him in the work of creation and re-creation. They pray. That God responds to prayer is astounding, because God knows his own plan. But that same God is changing those who pray; he is within them and working in them. We pray to move the God who is moving in us.

Prayer thus inevitably transcends to a state beyond the mechanics of cause and effect. The “kingdom” is the point. God’s work and plan are the point. God is at the beginning and the end of all of this, including everything I ask in prayer.

I pray for the wants of my children, for example. A certain concern has been on my mind. I pray repeatedly for it to be addressed.

Does this prayer “work”? Will it work in this situation with my family? Yes. And no. Not in the mechanical sense of I hope for A, and therefore I pray for A, and as a result A happens. Even if A occurs, it will not be directly the effect of my praying for it.

Does prayer work? Yes, in this sense: We are eternal beings. We seek alignment with the eternal, greater unity and completion about this truth of who we are. In this world, we are powerless, and should covet no power here. God lets us see where our still-changing aims and hearts flow within the flourishing of what he is doing, and he lets us see where our souls and aching hearts still need expansion or healing to better accord with what he is doing. He lets us see, by slowly bringing us to see, where the kingdom might find better purchase for its advance through us.

And we think about all of this. God gave us minds. They are being clarified and renewed. We pray, and there is a response of sorts, an interaction with the mystery, and we reflect on this. In helplessness, we pray, and in surrendered contemplation, we consider what we may be quietly learning through the effect of the experience.

Does prayer work? We see what we ask for come about, and so the mind is full of wonder and gratitude and praise. Or we ask and do not see the outcome granted, but we do instead encounter clues to the breadth and depth of the purpose God is working and moving to achieve.

Does prayer work? Always, never, only through God: all three of these at once.

The work of God is at work in us if we can come before him helplessly, and that work moves through both aspects of who we are. That is, it moves through the felt needs of my heart that I ask of him. It moves through my mind’s reflections. God is at work in our thoughts, and in our prayers.

Photo: “Angel’s Prayer” by _Pek_