Rebuilding the Ruins

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.

There are any number of metaphors we can use to describe our experience of walking with Christ.  Jesus Himself used numerous metaphors and stories (parables) to describe the kingdom of God.  Obviously, this is because no one single metaphor or image is sufficient to contain all the kingdom of God is.  The kingdom of God, being more transcendent, more glorious, more majestic and more holy than any other kingdom, must by definition be not only beyond but infinitely beyond any conception of word or image we use to describe it.

I think each of us, though, has a primary metaphor or image through which we relate to God and by which we understand and enter into our walk with Christ.  For me it’s running.  But not just any kind of running—there are sprints, dashes, repeats, relays, intermediate runs and marathons (even ultramarathons for really crazy people!).

The marathon is for me the dominant metaphor of my life with Christ.  Running a marathon is all about endurance, and my experience of life has taught me not only to value but to pursue endurance.  Without it, I fall short of God’s plan for who He designed me to be.  Endurance is not who I am, though; it’s a necessary trait or discipline for becoming who I am.

Every marathon runner experiences life on a number of levels.  First of all, the race itself is just the end of a much longer period of planning, training, perseverance and sacrifice, which are integral to finding oneself fit and ready at the starting line on race day, as well as finding oneself fit and ready at the starting line.

Secondly, every marathoner experiences pain, trouble, grief, and exhaustion.  The marathon surpasses the half-marathon, for example, in that, at some point, usually around 20 miles, your body runs out of fuel.  Sooner or later you find yourself completely and utterly tapped out.  There are numerous ways to delay this, but make no mistake, it’s coming—that point at which you’ve reached the end of what you’re capable of on your own and in your own power.  Yet there are still miles to go.  This is where training comes in.  Training teaches your body how to keep going in spite of pain and difficulty.  Training shows you where your limits are, and then helps you extend (but not eliminate) them.  Training teaches you to keep going when you want to quit—and wanting to quit always happens before you need to quit.

And lastly, every runner needs sustenance along the way.  As I said, run a marathon and you’re going to reach the end of yourself.  The trick is to delay that moment as long as possible, not because your goal is to avoid suffering at any cost, but because the whole aim of running a marathon is to finish well.  So we replenish fluids lost during the race and stock up on quick energy to get us a little farther down the road (the slow-burning energy was built up in the week before the race ever began).

Suffering, pain, sacrifice, difficulty, and obstacles, both expected and unexpected—all these are part of my story.  And all these find a newer, deeper level of meaning for me when I run.  From my earliest years, the question lingering just beyond consciousness for me was, “How will I survive this?”  I never realized it at the time, of course.  Hardly any of us recognize the question at the core of our being much before the middle of life somewhere.  For you it’s probably an entirely different question.  Underneath all the layers of my life, though, behind my childhood shame, behind my adolescent aimlessness, behind my desperation and longing, behind my desire to be recognized, affirmed and valued just for being me, behind my frustration with singleness, behind my struggle against cancer, behind all of this the question, “How will I survive this?” has tugged at me.

Running has taught me that suffering, pain, sacrifice, difficulty and unforeseen obstacles are not hindrances to walking with Christ—they’re to be drawn up into walking with Christ.  In fact, they don’t find their true, ultimate meaning until they’re drawn up into Christ.  Waiting for them to be over, or asking God to take them away, misses the point entirely.  We must offer them to Christ, make them a sacrifice of praise, burn them on the altar of devotion and humility, celebrate them as the reminders of creatureliness (and in some cases, fallen-ness) they are.

So—what’s the question burning at the core of your soul?  It’s there.  It always has been.  And what’s the image or metaphor or symbol that helps you find its meaning?  It’s there too.  Ask for the eyes to see it and the ears to hear it, and the One who sees all and hears all will reveal it to you in His own time and His own inimitable way.