NorthStar Community Daily Devotional

January 3

Scripture focus: Lord, teach us to pray. Luke 11:1

I am no stranger to bargaining with God in prayer. When I learned that I was pregnant and on medication that might cause my child to be born without arms, I begged and bartered with God for months. My boy has two perfectly proportioned arms, for which I am grateful. This was a foxhole kind of prayer. It doesn’t withstand the scrutiny of my own understanding of who God is and how prayer works. (I don’t know how prayer works.) My understanding of God is limited, but I am pretty sure I didn’t have enough baubles and beads to offer up to the maker of all creation to entice him to provide my boy with two good arms. But I still bargained with all my might.

If I had been born during the Hellenistic period, I might have gone to Seneca the philosopher and asked him how to pray for my child. He would have told me that prayers of a personal nature are foolishness, and I’d be far better off praying to God for the sake of improving my inner self. Seneca and other philosophers of that time believed that there was one god, but he was not interested in personal petitions and was certainly too busy to bother listening to individual prayers and petitions.

I know that Seneca was a really smart man in his day. But it makes no sense to me that our Father God would not have time to listen to his children. As a mother, there is no voice sweeter to my ear than the voice of my children. If my children call, I answer.

I am also not picky about how my children address me. When they were babies they cried, and I picked them up. As toddlers they told me, “No!” and stamped their feet for emphasis. I listened. I didn’t always give them what they wanted, but I did my best to provide what they needed. I didn’t hold their “nos” against them nor did I allow them to call all the shots. I didn’t rebuke them for being kids who were acting in a developmentally appropriate manner. Once they hit those late elementary school years, suddenly they knew everything. Putting up with the ignorance of others proved taxing to them. This perfectly normal developmental stage was not enough to keep me from being completely delighted with them, although reminding them of the need for respecting others (even if we are ignorant) was a regular and oft repeated conversation during those years.

If I, a mere mortal mother, respond to my children in this manner – how do we think God responds to our prayers?

I have foxhole prayers in my future – whether or not they are theologically sound. I desire to become a better informed, more practiced prayer because maintaining conscious contact with God makes good sense to me. But my prayers, no matter how ill-informed and desperately delivered reach the ears of a God who is delighted with his children. I think Seneca got this one wrong.

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