One More Look

Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief!”  Mark 9:24  NASB

Unbelief – “To live without prayer is to live without God, to live without a soul.”[1]  We’ve examined several insights about prayer.  We’ve struggled with the idea—and the practice.  We’ve confronted our own despondency, frailty, and unworthiness.  We know prayer is an essential element of being human—and it is an essentially human exercise, but . . . somehow we still feel as if we can’t get there.  Our prayers are faltering, frustrating, fabricated.  We often feel as if the lead ceiling stands between us and the celestial realm.  There are moments, of course, when the curtain is pulled back and we connect, but most of the time we just don’t know what to say, what to do, how to feel.  After all we studied and contemplated, we’re still left uncomfortable in our own skins.  What’s wrong with us?  We were created for communion with the divine, and yet . . .

There was a man who believed.  He believed on behalf of his son.  He might not have had the “perfect” faith needed to relieve the threat to his son’s life, but he believed as hard as he could with all the love of a father.  There was nothing selfish in his desire.  He only wanted his son’s life to be healed.  And yet . . . something was missing.  Something stood between his plea and God’s reply.  What it was he couldn’t say.  All he could say was “I believe.  Help my unbelief!”

The Greek term for the Hebrew spoken word is ápistia.  In this Hebraic context, it does not mean a lack of correct theological declarations.  The root is about trust.  The negative term here means “distrust, untrustworthy, unreliable.”  You know the Hebrew.  It’s aman—to be firm, reliable, secure, the root of our transliteration “Amen.”  You remember Isaiah?   “^aBehold, I lay in Zion a choice stone, a ^bprecious corner stone, And he who believes in ²Him will not be³disappointed.” ^[2]  Perhaps this father remembered the prophet too.  He wanted to believe.  He needed to believe.  He was desperate to believe.  But the hurdle seemed too much, the mountain too high.  All he could do—and it was all he could do—was cry out that whatever else was necessary, he was willing.  He just didn’t know what else to do.

Perhaps that’s where we are.  Willing but unable.  “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” said the master of prayer.  We might not be sleeping under the tree but we are certainly weak when it comes to total submission in prayer.  Perhaps there are times when the only “prayer” we can offer is the one that proclaims our inability.  And perhaps that’s the place to start.

If we are going to learn to be human, we have to learn to be helpless.

Topical Index: prayer, unbelief, ápistia, Mark 9:24

[1] Abraham Heschel, Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 211.

^a Is 28:16; Rom 9:32, 33; 10:11; 1 Pet 2:8

^b Eph 2:20

² Or it

³ Or put to shame

^[2] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (1 Pe 2:6). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.