The Heartache of my Soul

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” Luke 11:1  NIV

Us – Have you discovered that you don’t have the right words for prayer?  You want to communicate with God, but when you actually try, something is missing.  The words fall like lead balloons from the ceiling.  They don’t ascend to heaven.  They don’t touch the divine.  They’re far too human, too self-centered, too full of your own thoughts.  You’ve been taught that prayer is a conversation with your Maker, but where is the Other party in this dialogue?

Pay attention to Heschel’s crucial insight.

“Prayer is not a soliloquy.  But is it a dialogue with God?  Does man address Him as person to person?  It is incorrect to describe prayer by analogy with human conversation; we do not communicate with God.  We only make ourselves communicable to Him.  Prayer is an emanation of what is most precious in us toward Him, the outpouring of the heart before Him.  It is not a relationship between person and person, between subject and subject, but an endeavor to become an object of His thought.”[1]

Sometimes my prayers feel like conversations with myself.  I can’t get out of my own way long enough to connect with God.  I try to reach for Heaven, but Icarus shows up each time.  Heschel is right.  Prayer is not supposed to be soliloquy.  When I realize that my pleading is talking to the mirror, I just give up.  What’s the point?  Once more that theological model of communication with the divine does nothing but emphasize my inadequacy.  That’s when I need to listen to Heschel.  You see, when I grew up believing that prayer was dialogue, I was set up for failure.  When I thought that I would hear Him answer, just as I hear my children or my wife, I undermined my own effort.  “God answers prayer” makes it sound like reciprocal conversation.  And when that doesn’t occur, the natural explanation is that the problem is on my side.  I am doing something wrong.  I’m too sinful for Him to reply.  I’m not worthy of His attention.  But since I don’t know why He doesn’t speak to me, I don’t know how to fix this problem.  So, why pray?  It never gets me anywhere.  Just more empty theological promises.  My reality is silence.

“ . . . we do not communicate with God,” writes Heschel.  Oh, how important is that insight.  Prayer is not interaction with the divine.  It is the creaturely hope of recognition.  It is the movement that begs the Maker to turn toward His creation.  It is the child who just wants the parent to look at him.  Nothing more.  Just the assurance of personal awareness.  As long as my expectation is built on the false idea that God answers prayer, that He talks back to me, I will encounter the divine silence of the soul.  But if I realize that prayer is my heartache handed to my Father in hopes that He will notice me, then I can pour out my grief and suffering, my joys and jubilation, my agony and emptiness without feeling  judged in the reply.  Prayer is showing God my self, no strings attached.

Topical Index:  prayer, dialogue, reply, self, Luke 11:1

[1] Abraham Heschel, Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 200.