We have prayed so much [for naught]: pray more.

Posted on By pukeko

I have not managed to get the readings and the dates lined up, and the text today is one of the few parts of the Bible that most people know, and recite. The prayer of our Lord. How can I teach on prayer? I am not that great a prayer warrior: I have no great stories of triumph. I have some very mundane concerns — and although there have been a lot of health issues in my family even then I am not the most faithful person here. I tend to look for solutions before falling to my knees. And I live in a society where being anything by healthy, prideful, and full of the curdled milk of self esteem is seen as being unhealthy.

“Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith. I don’t agree at all. They are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the Passion of Christ”
? C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

So I turned to Lewis. He also did not have an easy life: from the trenches of WWI to seeing his only true love die of cancer, he suffered. His prayers did not seem to be answered. He was not, by the standards of this world, that triumphant. Yet, despite these issues (and the fact that he was a poet and scholar, not a theologian) he is the evangelist of the Anglican church from last century. He commented.

“Our struggle is–isn’t it?–to achieve and retain faith on a lower level. To believe that there is a Listener at all. For as the situation grows more and more desperate, the grisly fears intrude. Are we only talking to ourselves in an empty universe? The silence is often so emphatic. And we have prayed so much already”
? C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

Being Anglican, he knew the prayers: they are written, and the written prayers are good. But to the text.


Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” And he said to them, “When you pray, say:

“Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread,
and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.”

And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

(Luke 11:1-13 ESV)

I am reading this in the context of a series of sermons given at Kirk about the people of Israel taking Aaron, while Moses was away, and saying make us an idol: we need to worship as others do. I have had a long discussion with my son about ikons and ikonclasts — driven, by all things, by Age of Empires. So when I hear the disciples say that they need to be taught prayers I wonder if this is correct.

Then I look and find that Christ did teach them. It’s simple: It is quite short. I know many young children who can recite it. We pray for his kingdom, we pray that he will be called holy, that we will have provision, our sins will be forgiven, and that we are not led into temptation.

And then we are told to keep on praying: that God wants what is good, but that we cannot see it all the time. This very Christ, who tells us God wants to give us the Holy Spirit, went to a cross to die for our wrongdoing, not his.

Because it was his duty. He left his honour and glory and lowered himself to do this very thing. And this leads to my final thought. When I am motivated to pray, it is for others.

And even when things do not seem to be going well, let us pray. When we do not understand why or how and we are pressured, let us pray. Finally, pray for me, that I will pray, and not just rely on my twisted nature to find a plan so cunning it would make a weasel Professor of Logick and Oxenford.