Petition or Presence
So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Exodus 2:24 NASB
Heard – “In its original form, prayer is not asking God for anything; it is not a request. It is a cry; an elementary outburst of woe, a spontaneous call in need; a hurt, a sorrow, given voice. It is the call of human helplessness directed to God. It is not asking, but coming with one’s burden before God.”[1] According to Rabbi Ami, “a man’s prayer is answered only if he stakes his life on it.”[2]
When YHVH heard the children of Israel in captivity in Egypt, did He hear their daily pleadings for food, for shelter, for a better job, for health. Perhaps, but I rather doubt it. The cries that God heard were the cries of the dying, the emotional outbursts of hopeless woe. It seems to me that there were few if any requests among those sounds. But there was a lot of agony. There was a lot of sorrow. There was a lot of death. What God heard was not the flowery, crafted prayers with which we are so familiar. What He heard was the shattered turmoil, the aching heartbreak, the pummeled existence of people who were being ground into mortar between the bricks. What He heard was agony without words.
For this reason, God answered. Life was at stake in every moan.
If we are going to continue to call on His name with trivial eternal concerns, let us not expect the answers of an on-call genie. If we are going to play the game of self-sufficiency while enlisting the extra supernatural when necessary, let us no longer pretend that we are praying. Let us admit that a technological solution is the expected result. “God, just provide me with a little more, and I will be able to help myself with the rest.” Yes, that seems to sum it up. “I’m just in need of a bit of assistance in my quest for fulfilling those goals and good works that I have determined are useful. So, Lord, just help me out. It will be so much easier if I have a little supernatural cooperation.” Of course, if our “prayers” aren’t answered, we will go ahead planning another route. We won’t die. We haven’t staked our lives on any of it.
I wonder what our prayers would be like if we stopped trying to control the outcome. I wonder what they would sound like if we just took the lid off our efforts to control emotions. I wonder if we have ever really confronted sheer helplessness—and cried to the King. My guess is that most of the time we use prayer as another tool for control. We recruit God for the cause. I wonder how long He will put up with our arrogance before He allows the crush of a really evil world to remove our pretense for, say, three or four hundred years in order that we might realize what it means to cry.
Topical Index: prayer, heard, call out, Exodus 2:24
[1] Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits, Studies in Torah Judaism – Prayer, p. 107.
[2] As cited in Abraham Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, p. 71.
When I read the Psalms, especially those written by David, I see a lot of emotion, a lot of baring his soul, so to speak. A lot of questions–Why? How long? Where are You, Lord?
In the Artscroll Siddur, a portion of the daily prayer is…
“The outcry of the poor You hear, the screams of the destitute You listen to, and You save.”
Our silence is loud, it is heard and answered by a greater silence from on High. That silence is deafening. Help us YHWH.
I agree, as a country our silence is deafening.
This is a difficult post because of the truth it exposes. A tool for control? More often than we are willing to even think about I would say.
I think I am sincere but if I examine my own prayers, how often is it about my outcome? An attempt to recruit God to my purposes?
Ouch and double ouch. Maybe that is why I simply talk at God so much. What I do as prayer seems empty so many times.
We (I) can learn a lot from David.
Yes, of late, I have realized I just have need of doing more, knowing he has blessed me with everything I need for his work. Conscience of his presence and desires at each of my steps and knowing he is ready and willing to guide, empower and rescue when I fail, misstep or get distracted.
I think that time is coming soon…..very, very soon.
Sometimes it is hard to understand why God doesn’t answer our prayers. When I was in high school, I used to pray for deliverance from participating in certain activities, such as sports. I hated playing sports, but I came from a sports-oriented family. And of course we idolize sports figures. Who doesn’t’ want to be popular? I wasn’t a bad athlete, but it wasn’t me. I can remember one day sitting on our football field with a group of girls. We had tried out for the volleyball team. I remember praying please God don’t let me make the team. That may sound silly, but I was desperately unhappy but desperately wanting to fit in. If I could go back to high school, I would be a bookworm. Maybe not a very smart one, but that is what I would be. God never delivered me from this. In fact it got even worse during my senior year. So, if you have kids, make sure you are encouraging them to be what God designed them to be, not what you want them to be. And it doesn’t have to be verbalized. I was never told I had to play sports
“The cries that God heard were the cries of the dying, the emotional outbursts of hopeless woe.” YES! We need to cry out to ABBA YHWH for the violence, chaos, and desecration of lives taking place in Israel and around us.
HELP us, ABBA, direct us, give us wisdom for these days!
We don’t wish to hear repetitive, empty, vain ‘prayers’ uttered without feelings that dull our souls anymore!!!!!!!