Homeless Prayers

But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. Matthew 6:6 NASB

When you pray – Silent prayer, the paradigm of Christian meditation, has always alluded me. No sooner do I get in that quiet place than my mind starts traveling the byways of unrelated thoughts. I find myself in a battle just to stay coherent, much less in a spiritual state of the awareness of God. I have tried praying out loud in the inner sanctum but even that seems quite strange. I lack the flowery oration of preachers who seem more intent on providing Cliff Notes of the sermon in their prayers than actually expressing agony of the soul or joy of the spirit. So, since I am most comfortable and concentrated when I put words on a page, I thought I should try to write my prayers. Maybe then I can keep the train of thought focused and at the same time express my deepest concerns and longings.

I am hesitant to even address this prayer to “Our Father.” While I am rationally convinced that YHVH is honored by the title, and deserves it in every sense of the word, I feel uncomfortable that using it might still be presumptuous. There is a wide gap between “our Father” and “my Father,” so I suppose what I am feeling is not the possibility that God would be insulted by calling Him “our Father,” but rather that I am in no position except by group association to use such a title. Nevertheless, I am sure He understands my hesitancy and would love for me to be comfortable enough to address Him as Father. It isn’t His lack of concern or genuineness that bothers me. It is my sense of unworthiness that creates the barrier. I remember the power of “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Perhaps more than anything else in my life it is my deep sense of unworthiness that causes me to feel outside. I am keenly aware of how far I come short of even my own expectations. I can only imagine how far short of His intentions I truly am. This produces a profound sense of inadequacy. I compensate in the only way I know how. Compartmentalization and escape. So let me begin with this prayer:

“Lord, you know that I am totally inadequate for the task You have assigned to me. What can I do? How can I stand before You or act as teacher to any of Your children when I know how deficient I really am?”

“Lord, this brings me to a great concern. The fact that I feel unworthy of this work only exacerbates my desire to escape, to run from You and hide behind my own apron of leaves. My struggles and failures only serve to make the disparity larger. I am more than ready to give up. But that frightens me too. What will become of me if there is nothing left of the life I know? Even in my pain I have identity. Are you asking me to throw everything away and commit without reserve? And if You are, and I suspect You are, how can I do this?”

“Perhaps I am too focused on my own big picture to see the details in front of me. I read the poems of Your servant David and marvel that You pay any attention to us, to me, in the vast expanse of Your creation. But then I think, ‘How can my struggle make any real difference? How do I know that any of this will actually work out for the good?’ I hope that these are not simply questions of myopic personal concern. They are fears projected into the future, over the temporal horizon that I am not privileged to see.”

“Lord, help me just do what’s in front of me now. Help me let go of those projections that bind me to inaction.”

Now I realize that these words are still essentially egocentric. I realize that my biggest concern is me, and that this subtle form of idolatry has crept into my life almost unnoticed until it infects even the relationship I desire with the One who truly loves me. Luzzatto points me to something I dare not look upon—that my love for God is really measured by my treatment of others, that my spiritual condition is open to immediate inspection and absolute confirmation in this way. Do I really care for the well-being of others? Do I honor them? Do I cherish them? Do I do whatever is necessary to protect their dignity, their trust, their lives? This is the true test of my relationship with the Father, and it is one that I cannot manipulate. It is not subject to my inner spiritual “feelings” or some communal fuzzy theology. This is the digital talisman of faith.

“Father, (there, I said it), forgive me for being so consumed with me. Scrape away the residue of false pride and let me see myself as You see me. Give me the courage to know myself, the willingness to change myself and the power to carry out Your care for others so that I might become myself. And more than anything, Lord, mold my heart with compassion.”

Topical Index: prayer, secret, Matthew 6:6