I’ve been re-reading the book Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith… by Mandy Smith, and this section caught my attention again. (I think I may have quoted the first part in a sermon or midweek reflection when I read the book before, this time the second part is what caught me):
‘Celebrating what God can do without knowing what God
will do brought me to a new place of hovering – hovering between the known and
the unknown. Paradox is a place where we are very uncomfortable and where God
is right at home . . . It’s a place Jesus visits in the garden of Gethsemane,
and his prayer there provides the perfect way for humans to hover . . . There
is a way for us to be honest about our hope for particular outcomes and at the
same time to trust that God is good and powerful regardless of how the prayer
is answered.’
I’m feel particularly aware of discomfort and tension this
week, especially with the death of Patrick Lyoya just a few blocks from church.
Tension between the terrible pain expressed in the march on Saturday and our
joyful procession with palm branches on Sunday; tension between what we long
for for our community and the brokenness that exists in it. I’m longing for
hope and I’m afraid.
Jesus’ prayer in the garden is ‘please take this cup from
me’ and also ‘not my will but yours be done.’ And I haven’t really thought
about it as a model for our prayer before, but it is. Both parts of it. The
part where Jesus prays for what he wants – the cup to pass – and the part where
he prays for God’s will to be done. It’s a hard and scary prayer, because of
course, we know that the cup didn’t pass and that God’s will was done and it
meant death before resurrection. And I don’t know how to untangle how this
might relate to what’s just happened in our city, or what’s happening in our
world. It feels hard to trust that God’s will might somehow be done in all the
suffering around and within us.
But I’m hearing in this a deep invitation to pray, to pray
for what we want, to be honest with God with our hopes and our desperation,
with our longings for ourselves and our loved ones and our city and world, to
somehow express and entrust these things to God, AND to hold on to and trust
that God is good and powerful regardless of what happens. To pray for what we
want and to pray that God’s will be done.
Sometimes it’s hard for me to pray for what I want, because
I’m afraid it won’t happen. And sometimes I’m afraid to pray for God’s will be
done, because I’m afraid of what might happen. But I’m hearing an invitation to
have the courage to pray for both. And as I look for this courage, I’m reminded
of the song Open My Hands by Sarah Groves:
I
believe in a blessing I don’t understand
I’ve
seen rain fall on wicked and the just
Rain
is no measure of his faithfulness
He
withholds no good thing from us
No
good thing from us, no good thing from us
I
believe in a peace that flows deeper than pain
That
broken find healing in love
Pain
is no measure of his faithfulness
He
withholds no good thing from us
No
good thing from us, no good thing from us
I
will open my hands, will open my heart
I
will open my hands, will open my heart
I am
nodding an emphatic yes
To
all that You have for me
I
believe in a fountain that will never dry
Though
I’ve thirsted and didn’t have enough
Thirst
is no measure of his faithfulness
He
withholds no good thing from us,
No
good thing from us, no good thing from us
I
will open my hands, will open my heart
I
will open my hands, will open my heart
I am
nodding an emphatic yes
To
all that You have for me
As we
draw close to Good Friday and Easter, may God grant us courage to pray with
Jesus – both for what we want, and that God’s will be done.
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