Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. Luke 18:1
Yesterday I received a letter from a young friend whose life has taken some deeply sad turns. Not all of them are her fault. Many are the result of others who failed her at strategic moments in her development. Yet the current difficulty is of her own making as much as any of our wrong turns belong to us alone. The letter ends with a request to hear from me soon and with, "Please pray for me also."
Truth be told she has been at the top part of my intercessory prayer for over a decade now. Sometimes I have had very specific things in mind as I have prayed. Sometimes I just had her in my heart, lost a bit to know what to pray for beyond her healing and wholeness. Sometimes the prayer has risen from a place of disappointment, sometimes a place near anger or confusion about what has just gone on, some turn. I am again in a time of praying for healing and wholeness and have been.
So it is not difficult for me to understand Jesus when he teaches about "the need to pray always and not to lose heart." (Luke 18:1) It can seem almost natural to lose heart when you have prayed often for something and it is unclear you are making any impact or being impacted by divine care.
So Jesus tells a story of a persistent widow and a judge. The widow who by definition has limited influence keeps coming at this judge. The power imbalance is important. She, a widow has no man to stand in for her it seems. Jesus' culture granted lower status to women, governed when they might speak to a man who is not their husband, made them background noise, kind of like that old saying I never liked, "Children are meant to be seen, not heard."
But for the wrong reason this widow is heard. She is effectively driving the judge to some level of madness with her persistence. "Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming." (Luke 18:4-5)
Jesus then makes the point that God will grant us what is just. While I like that enough, what I often pray for is more like mercy. I suppose justice offered here is consistent with the 'judge' image. For elsewhere Jesus tells of the neighbor who goes to neighbor in the sleep time of night asking for bread for a visitor. It is given not out of fairness but out of care for the neighbor's need and burden of hospitality not to be neglected in Jesus' day. So much so will God care for us, we are told.
Perhaps this alone is enough, that as we pray even in a seemingly hopeless place, the divine care is shaping us. Instead of just dropping another on their spiritual head, we maintain awareness and care. The prayer can continue to soften our heart, our disappointment. Perhaps mercy, wisdom and need met will take root.
Yet the tradition teaches there is more. If one accepts that there is a God at the center of reality, however misshapened that reality seems at times, then there is a connection that runs deep. We cannot always or principally see the full shape. When I pray, I seek a connection outside myself. I connect to God. When I intercede, I stand in another's behalf, I hope for another. I allow that the other may not just now know how to pray or what to pray. I release into the order of things the possibility that the energy of my care will connect to the energy of God's care, will connect to the life energy of the one for whom I pray. Perhaps it will purify my life and energy as well. It is not mine to see the full connection.
For so long I have wanted to "fix" my young friend. I have tried but that has not been mine to achieve. I think this is what we call inappropriate co-dependence. I have not learned this lesson easily. So for the last year or so all I have been able to do has been to keep a margin of contact and pray daily.
I think I will tell her, now that she has asked for prayer, how long I have prayed and will continue to do so. This will be purified by my ongoing care to be shown in other ways. It has encouraged me when others have held me in prayer.
I once asked a nun when I was very young, "Why do you pray so often?" Her words remain. "So much of the world forgets to pray or does not know how. We pray more often to keep the balance. We pray on their behalf. It pleases the heart of God."
Maybe that is why I pray beyond the Daily Office, even as I cut the grass or drive to the store.
So as you pray today, remember these others who do not yet know they might need your prayer. Even as you drive or walk from here to there, "pray always and not to lose heart."
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