Is it OK to pray for a parking space? Numerous people have asked me that question over the course of my years as a priest. What do you think?
It seems to me that any kind of communication with God is better than none. So go ahead! Pray for a parking space, but don't stop there. There is much more to prayer than making requests. In fact, I have come to believe that there are levels of prayer. Some prayers are fairly immature, self-centered or simple. Our communication with God depends on how mature we are, what kind of mood we are in, and whether we are capable of listening as well as talking.
A few months ago, I began the process of getting my Florida license. I went to the DMV, one of my least favorite places on earth, with my old drivers license, a bill showing my Florida address, my insurance card for my car and my birth certificate.
There was a woman at the front desk. She checked all my documents, gave me a number, and told me to take a seat. I sat and I sat and I sat. It was my day off and I had to pick up my boys from school. I became irritated. I started asking God to make them hurry up. “I really don't want to have to come back, God,” I said.
They did not call me in time before I had to run to get the boys. So I came back earlier the next week. I tried to stay occupied sending emails and reading while I waited. After awhile, I was called up. The woman behind the glass told me that I didn't have enough documents. How could they be sure that I was the same person on my birth certificate? I had to bring in my marriage license. She told me this with a tired, resigned look on her face, like she would not be surprised if I just blew a gasket right there. So I had to leave with the Kansas license in tow.
Needless to say, I could not find my marriage license in the files and boxes, so JD wrote to Connecticut, where we were married fifteen years ago. They lost the request. One month later, we called again, only to find out that nothing had been done. Now I was praying not to be stopped by a cop on the road. I really tried not to drive too fast. Finally, the marriage license came in the mail. So the next Monday, I went to the DMV with lots of time to wait. I waited and waited. Just when I got to the woman behind the plexiglass, the computer system crashed.
“God,” I wanted to say. “Is this some kind of a joke?”
So I went early one morning on a Thursday and sure enough, the whole thing was done in fifteen minutes. It was like a miracle. Only fifteen minutes! Well, two months and fifteen minutes...
When we get frustrated or when we are in pain, we say mundane prayers to God.
“God, please let me pass this test.”
“God, please help the woman next to me not be so annoying.”
Physical pain can make us extremely focused and demanding in our prayers. I'll never forget the night JD had a horrible stomach virus and all I could pray was let it stop, please, let it stop.
A mother I knew had two sons. One of them would no longer speak to her. She talked about him incessantly, praying to God for him to come back to her. She could not ask for anything else. Just the same prayer, over and over, with very little remorse or understanding as to why he might have left. Just 'please bring him back to me. Please bring him back to me.”
Sometimes our prayers are more like laundry lists rather than a conversation. They are solely one way. Just items. Like a honey do list for God. God please help this person and that person and do this and that for me. Meanwhile, God can't get a word in edgewize.
Jesus encounters a sick man by the pool of Bethzatha in Jerusalem. The man has come, along with countless other wounded or sick, to see if the bubbling spring of the water will have some healing properties for him.
The man is lying by the pool. When the water started to bubble naturally from an underground spring, the people would pile in to see if the moving water would help them. But the man was weak and he did not have anyone to help him make his way into the water, so he was pushed aside time and time again. He was desperate for that water and he was angry, frustrated with his weakness and the people who were cheating him, cutting him out of the line.
Jesus asks him a simple question, 'Do you want to be made well?'
The sick man is so absorbed in his own predicament that he is unable to hear Jesus' question. Instead of answering Jesus, he complains about how no one will take him into the water and everyone keeps cutting him in line. He cannot grasp the fact that Jesus can make him truly well. The best that he can imagine is just getting his crippled body into the water. That is all he asks for because that is as far as he can conceive. He does not know what it means to be well. After 38 years, he has no idea of health. He just wants a place in the line of misery.
Our numerous requests don't make God mad, but they are a shame. They are like visiting a wise man and talking the whole time, instead of listening to what he has to say. What do we gain by making requests? Our requests assume that we know what is best for us. But what if we don't know what is best for us? What if God is asking us if we want to be well and we are asking for thinner thighs or a nap, for more money or a passing grade? God may be offering you caviar and you are making lists for different flavors of popcorn. God alone knows who you are without your cares and worries. God alone can make you well. Why make requests of the one who knows what you truly need?
So there comes a point in the life of a believer when we just stop asking because we realize that God might be saying something more important. There comes a time when we stop talking.
Try it. Stop worrying and moving and scheduling and thinking and doing. Just stop.
At some point we begin to wonder if God might have another, better plan, and if it might behoove us to listen.
God is giving you a chance to step out of the line, out of the mundane, daily worries of life. God is inviting you to open yourself to the possibility of becoming more than you ever thought you could be. You don't have to ask God for the small stuff. You don't have to just ask for contentment or health. You don't have to crawl through life when God made you to run.
The stories of the greatest disciples are always stories about people who listened to God and followed God. Never are they about people who told God what to do. When God told Paul to move, Paul moved. Paul went to places that he had never seen before, without a clue why he was going, always asking God to show him what to do, what to say. Paul listened when he prayed. He listened to his dreams. He listened to the people around him. Paul always knew that God had something much greater in mind than anything he could fathom. So he got up and walked, without asking how long it was going to take or what place he had in line. He just went forward. And look what God did with his life. God used Paul to change everything.
When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, I always thought he kind of gave up when he said, “thy will be done.” I thought he meant that God was the boss and that he would do whatever God wanted because God was in charge. It was like Jesus was saying, “You're right. I give up. I'll do what you want.” “I'll do it your way.” And sometimes I pray that way. I'll pray for someone in the hospital and I'll ask God to make them healthy again and then I'll add, “but Thy will be done.” It's like some kind of a thing I think I should say, because Jesus said it.
But what if Jesus really did know that God's way was better, was ultimately more joyful, more beautiful than anything he could imagine. What if he really did want to do what God wanted. What if he was really saying, “I'm scared, but I trust you, God.”
Isn't that what the words “Thy will be done” really mean? Don't they just mean I trust you. I trust that you're way is better than mine. You alone know how to make me well.
On this beautiful mothers day, I think of the phrase Mother knows best. But what if it is really God knows best? And truly believing that means changing how we pray, from lots of talk and lots of requests to lots of silence and lots of listening.
Do you trust God enough to let him make you truly well?
