Difficult
Prayers
“Go
where your best prayers take you.”
Frederick
Buechner
Have
you had a hard time knowing how to pray lately? I have. I want to pray for our president, but I can’t find any words written in my heart. I read Diana Butler
Bass’ words about prayer this morning to try and clear my own path. She
suggested a more general approach such as, “God, we pray for all who are
suffering from COVID, both our leaders and the poor, all who are frightened and
sick.” That feels genuine to me. One of the doctors who spoke on Meet the
Press Sunday morning reminded us that while our president was hospitalized with
the virus, so were 300,000 other Americans. That helped put things in
perspective.
Here’s
the dilemma for me—I suspect that my inability to pray honestly for the man in
the White House says more about me than about him. I do not wish him ill, but
at the same time, I thought maybe if he suffered just a little bit from his
illness it would cause him to have slightly more empathy for others. It didn’t.
Withholding heartfelt prayers for him seems mean-spirited and petty, but I’m
having a hard time being compassionate. I wonder whether you are successfully leaping that
hurdle.
I have
settled on simply calling upon God, and then holding up the names of people I know who are in travail right now—not
just the sick ones, but others who are injured or sad or struggling with something
in their personal lives. That I can do. After all, I don’t know the mind of God
or what is best for anyone else. I can’t tell God what to do, and I don’t want
to offer a bunch of platitudes that are meaningless. Diana Butler Bass says, “No
prayer should ever make you feel guilty; every prayer from the heart is authentic
prayer.” To that I say, Amen.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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