New year, new thoughts on prayer

I prayed many times this past week. They weren’t scripted prayers, they certainly weren’t elegant, and some of them may have contained four-letter words. No, they were mostly “groanings too deep for words,” the heaving of my spirit as I watched my gentle, kind-hearted (step)father-in-law Ken take his last breath.

Prayer often frustrates me because it doesn’t seem to do anything. So many people prayed for Ken to survive, to receive some miracle. I know, I know, prayer is more about us and our hearts than it is the circumstances we pray for—still, it would be nice if it felt a little more effective. In light of the week I had, I deeply appreciate two new articles we have about prayer. Debie Thomas reflects on the feelings in her prayers and what they have taught her about God’s presence. Timothy Jones explains how the apophatic tradition infuses prayer with a “sanctified bafflement.”

No video this week, but scroll down for a great book review, essays by our readers, and more.

Email me: How do you pray? What do you appreciate most about the practice?

Jon Mathieu
[email protected]

The feeling I no longer pray for

“For much of my life, my sense of what counts as a spiritual experience was too small.”

I hear no voice

“There’s a good reason that prayer sometimes seems hard and words seem inadequate and inelegant.”

Church vs. injustice, not church vs. state

“Ilsup Ahn argues that the Western church can recover its core communal identity as God’s covenantal people by adopting a new political-theological paradigm: the church versus structural injustice.”

review by Clint Schnekloth

In the Lectionary for January 8 (Baptism of the Lord A)

Even Jesus is unable to escape the consequences of sin, becoming a victim of human violence.

by Michael Rinehart
 

Field: Essays by readers

“There is treasure buried in the field of every one of our days, even the bleakest or dullest, and it is our business, as we journey, to keep our eyes peeled for it.” (Frederick Buechner in The Longing for Home)

from our readers, with support from the Frederick Buechner Center

Listen to the survivors

“Even the most well-meaning researchers come up against the central difficulty that religious institutions are reluctant to confront the cruelty of the past.”