Small things bright and beautiful

God does not despise "the day of small things"

Small things in nature make a big difference; so too do small
things in human society

In 2018 the i newspaper ran a Christmas charity appeal for the Muscular Sclerosis Society. It raised £67,000, a small sum compared with efforts like Comic relief, Children in Need, and Sport Relief. Yet the money made a huge difference to 72 people who benefited from such things as mobility scooters, home adaptations, wheelchairs, special chairs and beds, respite breaks, furnishings & appliances, driving lessons, essential home repairs, exercise kit, and laptops.

One of the smallest grants was to young carer for skating lessons and to another for a school trip. Those small sums bought two young people in challenging circumstances the opportunity to enjoy being teenagers with unforgettable experiences.

Small things can make a big difference. “No-one is too small to make a difference”, 16 year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg told the COP24 conference in early 2019; the claim has become her mantra since and is the title of her book of speeches. As a result of her one-girl school strike in Sweden for climate change, a new wave of concern has swept across the world. Greta is autistic, for which she has been lampooned on social media. But autistic people are not handicapped or insignificant. They’re often highly gifted and focussed. They, like anyone else, can make a difference.

We know this in theory, and occasionally we experience the little things – the smile, the gift, the encouragement – that make our day. But confronted by an impersonal world in which everything seems to be organised on a mega scale that ignores individual needs, it is still hard to believe that the little we can do in any area of life can have any effect whatever. So in a period of momentous upheaval and change technologically, politically, socially, environmentally and even spiritually, the biblical message – and challenge – that God puts a high value on small things is worth hearing again.

When the Jews returned from exile in Babylon to their ruined city of Jerusalem some 500 years before Christ, they started to rebuild the Temple. It was hard going; the workers were few, the resources scarce. Slowly the work petered out. Corporate depression set in. Then the Old Testament prophet Zechariah challenged them in God’s name: “Who dares despise the day of small things?” Who dares say that their small effort is worth nothing to God nor can accomplish anything in the great scheme of things? He reminded them that anything that is accomplished for God is “not by [human] might nor power, but by my Spirit” (Zechariah 4:6,10). God is not limited by our human weakness. The work got done.

"No-one is too small to make a difference"

Small beginnings, unlikely people

Most big outcomes have small beginnings. Multinational corporations begin as local small-scale initiatives. Throughout the Bible God always starts small, and often with the most unlikely people. One elderly, childless, semi-nomadic couple – Abraham and Sarah – were told they would be the founders of a numerous nation (Genesis 15:5,6). They believed the promise, and were.

When those descendants were reduced to hopeless slavery God took an aging murderer on the run, Moses, to rescue them. He was a stuttering man who couldn’t face public speaking. Yet God used him to liberate the Israelites from Egypt and organise the rabble into a nation. When that nation bemoaned its own smallness and weakness, he stated the Gospel principle: “The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous [or talented] than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you that he brought you out and redeemed you” (Deuteronomy 7:7f). The theme is reiterated in the New Testament: “By grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). We are small, unlikely and undeserving – yet loved, and called to serve.

There’s more. The spirited teenager, David, killed the lumbering Philistine giant who was terrorising the Israelite nation and so delivered them from oppression, doing with a catapult and a stone what armoured soldiers with swords and spears had failed to do (1 Samuel 17). Jeremiah was young, inexperienced, prone to depression, yet called to be a prophet and speak truth to power. He never lost his sense of weakness and inferiority, yet persevered in a thankless but necessary ministry (Jeremiah 1:4-10; 20:7-18).

Jesus was a Jew from an insignificant part of an occupied territory who began his work of transforming people and society with 12 followers whose loyalty, understanding and ability were imperfect. After his unjust crucifixion about 120 of his followers gathered in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. Inspired by the Holy Spirit their numbers had swollen to over 3,000 within 24 hours and the Christian church now numbers about two billion.

“God chose the weak (or small) things of the world to shame the strong,” Paul told the largely lower middle class congregation of Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:26-29), “so that no-one may boast before him”. Strip away the pretence of human pride and status, and the message applies to all, whatever our circumstances. “All have sinned; all are freely justified” Paul says elsewhere (Romans 3:22-28), adding that human equality before God rules out any form of boasting. Small things, small beginnings, small and allegedly insignificant people, are beautiful for God.

Small actions

In one of his most famous – and counter-cultural – statements, Jesus commended an impoverished widow who dropped two pennies into the collection plate. He said she had given more than the richer donors who were merely donating their spare change, because she had given all she had (Mark 12:41-44). He valued motives more than dutiful gestures. What we have is irrelevant to God: what counts is how we regard it, and then what we do with it.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg's
 book of speeches

            Jesus illustrated that principle powerfully when he took a boy’s packed lunch, fed a crowd with it, and then had the problem of disposing of a mountain of food-waste (Mark 6:35-44). A small offering of service placed into the hand of Jesus can have great consequences, whether we are aware of them or not.

So, Jesus said, “you are the salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13). Salt is spread thinly if it is to have a good effect. So too is yeast in a batch of bread dough (Matthew 13:33). Small numbers within a congregation do not necessarily indicate failure but neither should they be a reason for entrenchment. Jesus told us to pray for more people to spread his word and vision (Matthew 9:35-38) and commanded his minority movement to boldly make disciples (Matthew 28:19-20). Small need not be ineffective; big (as in some mega churches) does not of itself define “success” or “blessing”. Large churches have to downsize into smaller groups if they are to be pastorally and evangelistically effective.

Being small should not be a reason for inverted pride, though. Some sects and separatist churches consider themselves the minority custodians of a particular emphasis or doctrine, and thus spiritually superior. The Kingdom of God grows best when small groups work together on the agreed broad principles of the Christian Gospel even if their individual emphases and forms of organisation are different.

While Moses was receiving the ten commandments on Mount Sinai he faced a subtle temptation to go it alone. He was informed that the Israelites had given him up for dead and created an idol to worship. God suggested he destroy them and “then I will make you into a great nation”. In other words, to start small again, with Moses as a single faithful leader. Moses refused the offer and said that, in effect, such a move would do God’s reputation as the saviour of the people irreparable harm (Exodus 32:7-14). God relented, and Moses was left to continue his leadership of a mixed bunch of stroppy human beings. He had done the right thing.

Later the prophet Elijah was blind to the remnant of faithful people around him in an otherwise corrupt society. He bleated that he alone was left as a servant of God and that it was time to give up. But he was told that there were 7,000 other believers who he could have supported, or been supported by, and that there were three remaining things that only he could do (1 Kings 19:10-18).

That is the point of Jesus’ parable of the “talents” (Matthew 25:14-30). The man who was given just one bag of gold (as the NIV interprets it) “was afraid” and hid it away, earning the donor’s displeasure. “There’s nothing I can do” is a lie for anyone who belongs to God’s Kingdom, whether uttered by an eight year old or an eighty year old. No-one is too small to make a difference.

Nor is anyone’s faith too small. Jesus taught that faith needed to be no larger than a tiny mustard seed to move mountains: “nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20). Our personal assessment of the size of our faith is irrelevant because God is always bigger than what we think. God does not despise our day of small things; neither should we.

In his latest book, Pete Grieg, founder of the 24/7 prayer movement, writes “when you pray about the small things in life, you get to live with greater gratitude.… When you learn to pray about trivia … you start to notice how many minor miracles are scattered abroad in the course of an average day” – even, he suggests, when we truly pray “give us this day our daily bread” “in a land that’s full of the stuff”.¹

The Tesco strap line is right: “Every little helps”. It applies in every area of life, not just in the part we label “religious”. The small difference we make – whether reducing our use of plastic, feeding the birds in a garden, making the tea at church, inviting someone to an Alpha course – whatever, adds to the small difference someone else makes. In an election our single “insignificant” vote adds to the total of support or dissent. Who dares despise the day of small things?

God loves small things, and ordinary people, because through them he can demonstrate his power without it being confused with human virtue or talent. “When I am weak then I am strong, because God says, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

So give him what you have. Those two small coins. A picnic. A sling and some stones. A single bag of gold. Send a card. Give a hug. Listen to someone. Spend less, share more, slow down. Set an example that others can follow. Pray. Just live for Jesus where you are. The Holy Spirit, the energiser, the gift-giver takes our small things, small beginnings, and multiplies, magnifies them. That old saying about the straw that breaks the camel’s back reminds us that small things add up. God never loses count of them; “Your labour in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58). Ever.

Think and talk

1. Why do we so easily despise the day of small things?

2. “Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful. To go for gigantism is to go for self-destruction” (E.F. Schumacher, Small is beautiful, Vintage Books 2011, p. 131). In what ways has “gigantism” proved detrimental to people, churches, nations and the planet?

3. Elisha’s servant was terrified by the sight of a marauding army descending on his home, until his eyes were opened to see the angelic host and learn that “those who are with us are more than those who are with them” (2 Kings 6:16). How might stories like this and assurances such as those in Romans 8:31 and 1 John 4:4 encourage and strengthen our weak faith in the face of great challenges?

4, There is a temptation faced by many (especially leaders in church, commerce and state) to talk things up, to make situations or achievements seem greater, more effective, more significant, than they really are. How might we learn to celebrate and value the less than perfect reality, and what good might come from being more honest and realistic?

Reference

1.  Pete Grieg, How to Pray, Hodder & Stoughton 2019, p.71

© Derek Williams 2019

How to pray "Thy Kingdom Come"

“Thy Kingdom Come”, an annual international prayer wave between Ascension and Pentecost, promoted by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope, is a time to pray especially for friends, family, colleagues and the wider community, that people may encounter Jesus Christ for themselves. But it raises an interesting question: what do we really mean when we pray “Thy kingdom come” each week in the Lord’s Prayer? I searched my bookshelves and found some challenging answers.



The official Thy Kingdom Come logo 2019

Commentators agree that when Jesus talked about “the Kingdom of God” he didn’t mean a nation-state, church or even heaven. It is rather “the rule of God” which exists wherever and whenever Jesus is honoured and followed, “on earth as it is in heaven”. This Kingdom is ruled by love and powered by truth, expressed by service and characterised by humility. By all accounts, we need to be careful what we pray for when we reel off the familiar words!

When Jesus in Mark 1:15 tells us that “the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” he meant more than that he was beginning an evangelistic tour. Theologian Alan Richardson explains: “In general terms this means that Jesus proclaimed as good news the fact that God was setting about the task of putting straight the evil plight into which the world had fallen, or that he was beginning to bring to its fulfilment his original intention in the Creation”.¹



Jesus’ followers belong to this kingdom by virtue of both their commitment to him as saviour and to their conscious and deliberate reflection of his Lordship in the world. We help to build the kingdom now by bringing Jesus’ standards and purposes to bear on every detail of our lives. But there can be no new “Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land” (or anywhere else) until Jesus returns and fully institutes his kingly rule in a new creation that is beyond our imagining. The New Testament is clear that the whole realm of nature and human endeavour will be caught up in the new creation (see Romans 8:19-21; Colossians 1:19-20; Revelation 21:1-6). The kingdom is both “now” and “not yet”.

“Thy Kingdom come” then is primarily a prayer for God’s Kingship over ourselves. Says commentator William Barclay, “The Kingdom is the most personal thing in the world. It demands the submission of my will, my heart, my life. It is only when each one of us makes the personal decision and submission that the Kingdom comes.”² More recently, American Presbyterian minister Timothy Keller wrote, “It is asking God to extend his royal power over every part of our lives – emotions, desires, thoughts and commitments. … We are asking God to so fully rule us that we want to obey him with all our hearts and with joy.”³


A prayer with world wide scope

On that basis, “Thy Kingdom Come” then becomes a mission prayer, as we gladly long for Jesus’ Kingship to be extended to all around us. According to John Pritchard “It’s not a phrase to trot out in church on Sunday without at least a crash helmet and a first-aid kit. This is serious praying for God’s massive attack on all that frustrates his good and loving purposes.”⁴

And it extends to the whole world of human affairs. Says the founder of the 24/7 Prayer movement, Pete Grieg, in his forthright style, “It’s tragic that the most revolutionary cry in world history, ‘Let your kingdom come’, is so often reduced to a religious catchphrase, mere shorthand for a few less people leaving our churches and a few more homeless people receiving a tuna sandwich on Friday  nights. By contrast early 20^th-century Dutch Prime Minister Abraham Kuyper … wrote ‘There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: Mine!’”⁵

God's Kingdom is far removed from concepts of earthly power
but it envisages a new world order ruled by God's love
and purposes.

It certainly means praying for new disciples, but it also “means seeing the world … with the love of the creator for his spectacularly beautiful creation; and to see it with the deep grief of the creator for the battered and battle-scarred state in which the world now finds itself,” writes theologian Tom Wright. “We are praying for the redemption of the world; for the radical defeat and uprooting of evil; and for heaven and earth to be married at last, for God to be all in all.”⁶

Pete Grieg in his latest book draws attention to the promise in 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” He picks up on the last phrase: the forgiveness of sins and the healing of the land are entirely contingent on the intercession of God’s people. What task could possibly be more important, more urgent for our world today?”⁷

But prayer alone, important as it is (and for some people, especially those largely housebound, the greatest thing they can do) is not for many of us enough. Praying “thy kingdom come” also means committing ourselves to the kinds of Kingdom-building actions that demonstrate our membership of it.

Swiss professor of systematic theology Jan Milič Lochman, recognises the depressing state of the “dark horizons” of the modern world and suggests that “thy kingdom come” sets them in a fresh context and thereby “relativizes them, robbing them of their final validity. Kyrios Christos [Lord Christ]: The Risen Lord is the Lord of the principalities and powers. This liberates us. We are no longer the prisoners of omnipotent fate. … Our world must not remain as it is. Resistance is possible; our hearts and circumstances can change.”

 He asserts that, “It makes a decisive difference to culture and society if there are groups within them that amid the oppressions of time keep their eyes open to the kingdom of God, praying for it and following it in the direction that Christ’s promises indicate, that is, by taking up the cause of the poor, acting on behalf of prisoners and the handicapped, freeing the oppressed, and especially proclaiming the acceptable year of the Lord, the liberating future of God. The state of the world will be renewed.”⁸

We help to build the Kingdom by living as liberated members of it, and by praying for people to come to know Jesus Christ personally. Then they in turn, through their renewed and changed lives and witness, bring God’s rule to bear on their corner of the world. So the shorthand “thy Kingdom come” becomes: “Allow me to be an agent of your kingdom by bringing peace to the anxious, grace to the needy and your love to all whom I touch. May people believe in your reign of goodness because of how I live and speak today.”⁹

Think and talk

Just consider the different ways in which you can make the prayer, “thy kingdom come” become more specific in fact, broader in scope, and deeper in meaning, for you and your friends. And remember that, each time you join in the Lord’s Prayer.

References

1.  Alan Richardson, “Kingdom of God”, A theological word book of the Bible, SCM Press 1962, p.119

2.  William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew volume 1, St Andrew Press 1956, p.212
3.  Timothy Keller, Prayer, Hodder and Stoughton 2016, p.111-112
4.  John Pritchard, How to pray, SPCK 2004, p.17
5.  Pete Grieg, Red moon rising, David C Cook, 2015, p. 36
6.  Tom Wright, The Lord and his Prayer, SPCK 1996, p.31
7.  Pete Grieg, How to pray, Hodder and Stoughton 2019, p.88
8.  Jan Milič Lochman, The Lord’s Prayer, William B Eerdmans, 1990, pp 62-63
9.  Philip Yancey, Prayer, Hodder and Stoughton 2006, p.164, slightly altered

© Derek Williams 2019

Don't be like a Narcissus!

In admiring spring’s hosts of golden daffodils we easily forget the significance of the sad tale of the mythological figure after whom they take their generic name. Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in a pond, and spent his life, in Stephen Fry’s words, “with eyes only for himself, and consideration for no one and nothing but himself”.¹ The gods eventually turned him into a daffodil with its head looking down.

Narcissism – or “individualism”, to give it the more common title – focusses on oneself and one’s interests, appearance, advancement and status, often to the exclusion of all others. It has almost become the purpose of life for many people in western society. It’s not just selfies and fast fashion for Instagram and Facebook. It’s also the me-first race for the lights or the checkout, and the bullying, ridiculing, trashing and trolling of people who think, look or live differently to ourselves.

It vaunts itself as the ultimate arbiter of taste and truth. It asserts its desires often disguised as “rights”. It ignores the wider context of the common good, hamstrings church life, hinders our relationship with God and hampers our prayers. It fosters the cynicism and factions that the Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking at the February 2019 General Synod, urged the Church of England to give up. Above all, it reverses the thrust of the Lord’s Prayer and Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane: it insists on “My will, not yours, be done.”

Contrast that with the love St Paul described in 1 Corinthians 13 which doesn’t boast or envy, isn’t proud or self-seeking, and never dishonours others. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit,” he writes in Philippians 2:3-4. “Rather in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others.”

Contemporary narcissism is often subtle, however, and it is important not to make sweeping judgements of others. Being judgemental can be an expression of narcissism because it asserts our own assumed superiority. The disastrous British Army recruitment drive in 2018 wrongly assumed a generational trait of “Me me me Millennials”. It failed to impress many of its target audience because, glued to screens as that generation might be, it is also highly critical of the “me me me” attitude of older generations, remote government and uncaring, profit-obsessed commerce that has led to environmental breakdown and growing poverty.

Freedom and responsibility

While Christians are freed from the many constraints of legalism, no-one is free to do as they please. Paul stressed this to the Roman church where, it seems, some were so rejoicing in their new-found freedom in Christ that they were indulging every personal desire (Romans 6:1-18). There are boundaries for conduct (both in the Ten Commandments and the teaching of the Apostles) that are intended to limit human excess and preserve corporate relationships.

To accept personal responsibility and restrain ones conduct is to make a positive commitment to community. (This is why Paul, who had long forsaken Jewish food restrictions, submitted to them for the sake of people whose consciences were more sensitive, 1 Corinthians 9:19-23, 10:23-33.) Individualism can adversely affect a wide pool of people. In Joshua 7 national defeat results from the wrong action of one person. To us, that may seem unfair; to ancient Israelites it was the natural outworking of what scholars call “corporate solidarity”. In biology, one deadly spore can infect a large group or area; in society, the effects of one person’s sins spread to others. (Which is what lies behind Paul’s teaching about “original sin” in Romans 5:12-19.)

The Bible outlaws the self-justifying blame culture, too. “The one who sins is the one who will die” was Ezekiel’s response to an ancient Israelite complaint that the current generation was paying for the errors of its forefathers. He had an equally curt message to the clergy and leaders of his day (called watchmen); if they failed to warn people of danger arising from their risky behaviour, the watchmen themselves would be held to account (Ezekiel 18:4; 33:6). Biblically, the common good takes precedence over personal preference or power and party prestige or policy.

It even suggests that corporate solidarity involves the innocent in the sins of the guilty. In Ezra 9 the eponymous teacher publicly confessed “we have sinned” when only 112 people out of several thousand had broken one of the laws of Moses – and Ezra was not one of them.

Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection.
Individualism is a barrier to community.

Community commitment

Both Old and New Testaments assume a personal commitment to one another in community. Jesus spoke of “the Kingdom of God”, which exists wherever the rule of God is applied in human relationships and activity. “It was the final expression of the distinctive Hebrew tenet that God is the proper head of human society,” according to one theologian.² Christians belong to it by virtue of their commitment to King Jesus.

Paul described “the body of Christ”, the church, as such an integrated whole that when “one part suffers, every part suffers with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26). Believers are not semi-detached, even if we behave as if we are. That makes the Christian song so poignant and necessary: “Bind us together, Lord, bind us together, with cords that cannot be broken.”

The New Testament occasionally describes the church as a family or even a nation (Ephesians 2:19-22; 1 Peter 2:9-10). In such groupings, disagreements are inevitable. So Paul pleaded with the early church to “make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3), echoing one of Jesus’ two unanswered prayers, that “they may be one as we [the Trinity] are one” (John 17:11). How can it be otherwise, if “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28)?

But it is otherwise, sadly. One of the natural outcomes of narcissism is fragmentation of communities and churches into cliques, and splinter or single-issue groups. According to one count, there are 38,000 Christian denominations in the world today. Splits can sometimes divide individual congregations as one sub-group prefers their way to that of others.

Indeed, our sense of belonging is often focussed on a specific sub-group rather than the whole of which the group is a part. Within towns churches usually work independently (and often competitively), and only occasionally pool resources to make a missional impact on the wider community before retreating back into their own comfort zones.

Narcissism can also diminish our prayers. “Prayer is the mirror image of individualism, even though it may appear to be a highly individual activity,” wrote theologian James Houston. “A relationship with God that does not relate to other people is unreal. … We pray to a God who loves the world, and so our prayers will be false if we do not respond by loving other people as well as loving God.”³

It was not for nothing that Jesus taught his disciples to pray Our Father – not my Father. The whole of the Lord’s prayer is couched in communal terms: Give us our daily bread. Forgive us our sins. Lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from evil. And it’s chief missional petition – your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth – is really a prayer for the restoration of love, care, peace and mutual support in the diversity of the world and church.

Faith can become privatised instead of leading us into a model community reflecting the unity of the Trinity in a disordered and fragmented world. Here’s some practical steps to help us rebuild true community within church fellowships:

·         Teach yourself to think we, us rather than me or them when considering any aspect of church life.

·         Pray for all the sub-groups and activities in your church, not just those you are a part of.

·         Before developing “your” group, ask how it can better dovetail into the wider church and what effects your development might have upon, and contribute to, the whole.

·         Before undertaking a new initiative, ask what similar work is already being done that you could join with and further assist without taking over or competing for scarce financial and human resources.

·         Consult widely and ask what the Holy Spirit might be leading us to do (or not do; good ideas sometimes arise from individuals’ agendas or experiences and are not always applicable everywhere).

·         Find ways of ensuring that all the sub-groups can meet each other regularly and exchange news.

All it takes is some mutual trust and respect, with a sprinkling of patience and humility. Use the spring daffs as a reminder of the dangers of narcissism, and see the beauty of a clump of them as a reminder of the benefit of community over individualism.

Think and talk

1. Paul immersed himself in local cultures and so identified himself with others that he made himself “all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22). What principle might this suggest for mutual fellowship and mission?

2.  Jesus said “a house divided against itself will fall” (Luke 11:17). While the context was not about the church, the principle applies. What steps can you take to strengthen the bonds in your church so that you may grow together?
3.  Jesus also described the Kingdom of God in terms of equal treatment of unequal people (Matthew 20:1-16). How might this principle affect the way you welcome and integrate people into church life and activities?
4.  Why do we find it so hard to think “we” rather than “me”? What can you do to change this mindset in yourself?

References

1.  Stephen Fry, Mythos, Penguin Books 2018, p. 341-2.

2.  Charles Ryder Smith, The Bible doctrine of society, T & T Clark, 1920, p.255-6
3.  James Houston, The transforming friendship, Lion Publishing 1991, p.54

© Derek Williams 2019

This material may be reproduced for local church use with full acknowledgement of its source. 

God does know what we mean

Prayer is not meant to be said parrot-fashion according to
the Pope - and Jesus. But God understands our halting words

“I know what you mean”: it’s a phrase that we trot out whenever anyone is having difficulty explaining or describing something. Sometimes it’s true; their stumbling words are enough to convey their true meaning. At other times, it’s an empty platitude, meant to encourage but possibly insulting. It’s not worth saying; we can’t enter into someone’s mind, feelings or experience.

It’s a relief, therefore, to discover that God really does know what we mean when we attempt to address him in prayer. Paul wrote to the Roman church, “We do not know what to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God” (Romans 8:26,27).

In other words, the Holy Spirit interprets what we’re trying to say and incorporates it into the language of heaven. He knows what we mean. This removes from us the pressure to choose the “right” words or formulae that we think God needs in order even to hear us, let alone answer us. God doesn’t need words at all, in fact, just the trusting, believing, earnest desire to see his will being done in the situations that concern us.

Interpretation in the realm of human language is an art, not merely a science. It’s not just a matter of finding equivalent words in the second language which match those of the first. The interpreter not only needs to have a strong understanding of the subject matter being spoken about, but also  of the speaker’s intention and underlying meaning. S/he needs to “know what you mean”, not least because the idioms of one language do not always transfer easily into another. One of the fundamental principles of Bible translation is to search for “dynamic equivalents” in the culture of the intended readers; there’s not a lot of point in referring to sheep in an island culture entirely focused on fishing.

One extreme example of how God translates prayer is the bizarre Old Testament story of Balaam. He was a seer or perhaps witchdoctor from the region of modern Iran. He was hired by Balak, the king of Moab, who was a near neighbour of Israel which he feared would over-run his country. Balak asked Balaam to curse Israel for a fat fee, which the “prophet” gladly accepted.

But two things happened. First, he nearly didn’t get to Israel at all. His stubborn donkey refused several times to carry him further. Then, the narrative says, “the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth” and it complained at his rough treatment trying to force it on. In other words, Balaam realised that it wasn’t the donkey’s fault; that God was using the donkey’s behaviour to get through to the even more stubborn prophet and warn him off his plans.

Then, when God failed to deter him and he eventually arrived in Moab, Balaam tried to curse but all that came out was a blessing on the Israelites across the border. Three times. After that he went home without his fee. (See Numbers 22-24.) God had told him how to pray and turned the potential curse into an actual blessing. The divine interpreter knew better than the prophet how to express the will and purposes of God.

This hides an important truth. Our prayers usually stem from what we can see, what we feel. They are genuine expressions of need or desire. But they don’t always correlate with God’s wider purposes, which we cannot usually see. The bigger picture is hidden from our view. That doesn’t invalidate our prayer. Each is incorporated into “Thy will be done” even if what we think should be done is not exactly what God proposes. Each prayer is translated into something effective by the Divine Interpreter.

Align with the Spirit

Several times in the New Testament we are urged to avail ourselves of the help of the Holy Spirit as we pray, so that our prayer is better aligned to God’s wider purposes. “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people (Ephesians 6:18). “But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life” (Jude vv. 20-21).

Keeping in step (with the Spirit) requires
discipline and practice

In practice, this means “keeping in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25), listening to God to prompt us with his concerns and submitting ours to his. It means learning to see “reality from God’s point of view”.¹ James Houston explains, “Through the leading of the Spirit in prayer our intercession becomes one with the intercession of Christ, our minds become attuned to his, and his concerns become ours.”²

Or, as the earlier theologian C.H. Dodd put it, “true prayer is the divine in us appealing to the divine above us”.³

For some Christians, including the current Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, praying “in the Spirit” may include “praying in tongues”, a spiritual language given by God which the speaker does not understand.⁴ Many can testify that this usually gentle gift mostly exercised in private aids them in worship and to bring before God the needs of themselves, their church and their world. The Spirit interprets their desire and concern by using his own language.

Helpful as tongues is, it is not portrayed as a necessity in Scripture. To use the words of the poet William Cowper in a slightly different context, “God is his own interpreter, and he will make it plain.”⁵ God knows what we mean, whatever words and language we use.

This also means that no prayer is wasted; it might be a bit off-message as far as God’s purposes are concerned, but if it’s a genuine expression of our concern at the time of uttering it, then it can be interpreted and caught up into the great stream of prayer that flows around the throne of God. He knows what we mean, and he’s not going to waste our breath.

In his story of the 24/7 prayer movement, Pete Grieg reproduces an email he sent after taking part in a meeting of young people in Spain nine years after he had begun to pray for a Spanish “army” of intercessors. At that moment, he realised that God never forgets “a single prayer that his children utter, even if they do.

“The very idea that the living Lord might diligently have treasured up every little prayer I had ever prayed, even all the ones I had forgotten, and that he might still be weaving their fulfilments, was almost too much to take in. It means that there must be answered prayers most days that I never even recognise as such, and casual requests I have uttered that continue to marshal the very hosts of heaven.”⁶

There is, of course, an inevitable caveat.

Silence the parrot

“When you pray,” said Jesus, “do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:7,8). Such divine knowledge doesn’t remove the need to pray – it’s one of the laws of the spiritual universe that if we don’t ask, we don’t often get; our prayer is an expression of a two-way relationship.

(The paradox that God knows what we want before we ask is dealt with beautifully in the novel The Shack, and the film based on it. It pictures its main character, Mack, in conversation about his family with the three persons of the Trinity. “You already know everything I’m telling you, don’t you? You’re acting like it’s the first time you heard it,” he says. And Sarayu (the Holy Spirit) responds, “As we are listening to you, it is as if this is the first time we have known about them, and we take great delight in seeing them through your eyes.”⁷)

Pope Francis suggested early in 2019 that many Christians “speak to God as if they were a parrot”, reciting words such as the Lord’s Prayer that they mistakenly believe have some inherent power to endear God to them.⁸ Readers of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale may recall the shop with prayer machines. “There are five different prayers: for health, wealth, a death, a birth, a sin. You pick the one you want, punch in the number, then punch in your own number so your account will be debited, and punch in the number of times you want the prayer repeated.”⁹ If only it was that simple!

“No, praying is done from the heart, from within,” the Pope added. Harry Emerson Fosdick, an American Baptist minister in the first half of the 20^th century, wrote “Our prayers are often unreal because they do not represent what in our inward hearts we sincerely crave.”¹⁰ Note that word crave. Cravings aren’t expressed in nice polite words. They don’t even need words. But they do represent what we most want.

So we find the Psalmist craving God: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Where can I go and meet with God?” And this craving isn’t articulated in clear words but in deep, emotional cries: “My tears have been my food day and night … I pour out my soul” (Psalm 42:1-4).

We find Jacob clinging with all his strength to God despite his physical pain and injury and refusing to let go, craving God’s blessing (Genesis 32:22-32). And in a rare example of silent prayer in the Bible (it was treated with suspicion in the ancient world) we find the childless Hannah pouring out her heart in tears to God, craving the child without which she was regarded by her neighbours as cursed (1 Samuel 1).

Fosdick takes this thought further, which helps, perhaps, to illuminate further the story of Balaam and Balak. “We are hunger points in the universe; the elemental fact in every human life is desire. To the man who disclaims any act of prayer we may retort, ‘Your life is an organized prayer. Your body craves food, your mind craves knowledge, your affection craves friendship, your spirit craves peace and hope.’” So here, perhaps, is a reason why fasting is sometimes advocated as an adjunct to prayer; it elevates the craving for God above the craving for food or anything else.

However, Fosdick goes on to suggest that “prayer may be either heavenly or devilish”. Balak’s was devilish; Balaam’s was translated into something heavenly. He highlight’s Gehazi’s craving for money (2 Kings 5), David’s lust for Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11), and the prodigal son’s hunger for wealth and the freedom it could bring (Luke 15) as examples of craving that are really self-centred prayers.¹¹ Jesus’ condemned Pharisees who craved the attention of others by practising their piety ostentatiously in public: “They have received their reward in full” (Matthew 6:5). That is, their desire to be seen by people was granted; but their prayers weren’t heard by God.

Parrot owners know that to silence a chattering bird they must cover the cage with a dark cloth. Perhaps some of our prayers need to be silenced, while we align ourselves afresh with God, and refrain from bursting into his presence with a list of demands. Instead, like the four apparently wordless friends who lowered a paralysed man to the feet of Jesus and left him there (Mark 2:1-12), it might be better to lay the real desires of our hearts before God and let him work out what needs to be done.

Don’t worry about the words; God knows what we mean. But if we don’t mean it, there’s not much point saying it. Unless we’re parrots.

Think and talk

1.  Look up the Bible references quoted in the text and consider what you can learn from them.

2.  Think about what people (including yourself) really crave. Why do we let such cravings control us?
3.  Put in your own words what “keeping in step with the Spirit” might mean, and how this might be practised.
4.  Many people find written prayers helpful. Discuss how you can make such prayers, with their often well-chosen words, your own so that you are not merely reading or hearing them, but actually praying them.
5.  What do you think about when reciting the Lord’s Prayer?

References

1.  Philip Yancey, Prayer, Hodder & Stoughton, 2008, p.21
2.  James Houston, The transforming friendship, Lion Publishing 1991, p.157
3.  C.H. Dodd, no source referenced, quoted by Houston, op. cit. p.127
4.  Justin Welby has stated this on more than one occasion, including in a media interview in January 2019.
5.  These are the final words of the hymn which begins “God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform”.
6.  Pete Grieg, Dave Roberts, Red moon rising, David C Cook, Third edition 2015, p. 151
7.  William Paul Young, The Shack, Hodder 2007, p.106
8.  Reported in The Times, 5 January 2019
9.  Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, Vintage 2016, p.257. In the same story, the Bible is kept locked up so that the girls cannot read it for themselves.
10.  Harry Emerson Fosdick, The meaning of prayer, Association Press 1917, p.133
11.  Op. cit., p.143

© Derek Williams 2019