The Amazing Old Testament
I laughed out loud when I was reading Percival Everett’s marvelous, soulful novel, James – more than once, but including the scene where Huck is trying to explain to Jim why praying makes no sense: “I don’t see no profit in askin’ for stuff just so I don’t get it and learn a lesson ‘bout not gettin’ what I asked fer. What kinda sense does that make? Might as well pray to that board there.”
I’m always a bit impressed by the mental gymnastics people go through in order to reason out why you pray for this or that, but don’t get it, or get something else. Garth Brooks crooning “I thank God for unanswered prayer” – as he’d prayed for one woman, didn’t get her, but got an even better one later. Or God makes you wait so you keep asking. Or you didn’t ask quite right. Or… whatever.
I understand though. It’s one thing to bat around intellectual ideas about prayer. It’s another when you are praying for someone you love, but the cure doesn’t come. Why didn’t God answer? Was it some lesson to be learned? What kind of God withholds a cure in order to school the heartbroken survivors? Is there even a God, or are we praying to a board?
The vast Old Testament can reveal much to us about prayer. It’s fascinating to me how rarely in Scripture’s pages, people actually pray for some favor, big or small. Adam, Eve, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Miriam, Hannah, Samuel, David, Job and Jeremiah speak to God, but the content, the subjects covered, are things like God telling us how to live but then getting a rationale in reply for why we know better… or God saying Go here or Go there or Do this, and we say Yes, Lord… or vigorous wrestling with God, or complaining to God, committing to sacrifice what is precious to God. So many prayers are simply praise of God, verbalizing God’s greatness, wisdom, splendor, beauty. Job, in utter misery, prays simply for God to show up and listen to him.
The Psalms are (is?) Israel’s prayerbook, a compilation over the centuries of prayers that the people prayed, passed down to their children and neighbors, and then memorized. Mary taught Jesus these prayers – and so I am moved when I ponder his prayers while suffering on the cross. He didn’t make up a single word, but prayed Psalms she had taught him, like Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and Psalm 31, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” How deeply and agonizingly did these words resonate when she heard them?
The Psalms are hell-bent on the praise thing, and also gratitude. Prayer is giving thanks. Paul was well-steeped in the Psalms, causing him to write “With thanksgiving, make your requests known to God” (Philippians 4). Not “Make your requests known to God, and then if God does what you want, give thanks.” We begin, end, and stick with gratitude. And how challenging is it to learn that in Hebrew, there’s no equivalent for our word “thanks”? When the Psalms say “Give thanks to God,” the word in question is todah – and a todah is a tangible sacrifice, something of huge value to you, which you offer up to God to demonstrate your gratitude, and your bold faith that it all belongs to God.
Prayer in the Psalms is also lament, crying out to God. But it’s intriguing to me how rarely Psalms of lament actually specify the outcome desired. The Psalmists seem rather to voice their agonies to God, hoping God will hear, and be with them, and do something, anything. Hope, as I’ve said many times in these emails, is less about outcomes than who’s there when there’s an outcome. Jesus’ nickname isn’t “God-answers-your-prayers,” but “God-with-us,” Immanuel.
And it’s “us.” Old Testament prayers are not often private moments in the quiet with God. People prayed together. Even if you prayed in your own misery, you would likely do it in the temple or city square where others would hear and join their hearts to yours. Your gratitude would spark gratitude in them.
And the Israelites prayed together as a nation, and for their nation. I may be wrong, but when I hear Christians speaking words about our nation, they are not often directed together toward God, but are spoken in judgment or blame on others in the nation. I love to wonder what it would be like if we could find the way to come together across the political divide and simply pray, humbly, and hopefully, and together to God for this place we love but bedevils us all so.