Prayer, by Hans Urs von Balthasar, that is.  I had heard of this book for several years, but never really had the time or opportunity to look it up.  Recently, I came across a reference to it in a book by Eugene Peterson and thought (once again), “I need to check this out.”

This book has stirred quite a lot of reflection in me over the last couple weeks, and this post is not so much about what von Balthasar says as a general reflection of prayer—then we can get into his stuff.  Trust me, it’ll be worth the wait!

Prayer is about what is traditionally known as contemplative prayer.  A better way to understand it, though, would be “listening prayer.”  The first thing that comes to mind for most of us when we think of prayer is intercessory prayer (essentially, praying for others), praying for our own needs, or praying about concerns throughout the world.  All of these, while necessary and important, will inevitably become misguided and aimless if not informed by contemplative, listening, prayer.

We need to know how to pray, but we usually just dive in.  The problem with this is that the initiative lies with us.  We see a problem, and pray about it, seeking God’s help and intervention to resolve the issue.  This makes God our servant.  Instead, we ought to see the problem, listen to God (“Where are you in this situation, Lord?  What do you want to do?  How do you want to intervene, serve, love, heal, forgive, redeem here?”), and then join our prayer with His plan and purpose, invoking His presence and ushering His reality into existence in the here and now.

Only when we invite God into our circumstances do we even begin to see the multitude of possibilities that arise there.  It is actually possible that God desires, even longs, to see something far more profound and powerful accomplished in, through and around us than we intuit in the moment.  This is the reason so few of us see answers to prayer—we’re simply not praying in line with what God is up to.

Our first instinct is to fix the problem, and this is very often the result of our own discomfort with someone else’s pain (or our own—sometimes our “prayer” is more about alleviating our own discomfort than the person’s we’re praying for!).  Next time a need arises, look first to God and make your first prayer, “Lord, how are you at work here?”  Offer the situation to Him and look to see what He is making, and wants to make, of it.  Then, when you join your prayer to the situation, you become a vessel through which Christ’s love (grace, mercy, forgiveness, healing, redemption) can flow into the life of another.  How can we know which of these is most needed unless we first look to see where Jesus is at work?

Apart from genuine listening, prayer devolves into an exercise in seeing our own will done rather than God’s.