The Complexity And Challenges of Praying for Others

"Please pray for me."  - "Please pray for her." - "Please pray for him."

It's an essential refrain of the faithful. The call to pray for each other is echoed throughout the Bible, but perhaps most clearly in James 5:16, "Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed." Each Apostolic letter is full of examples of the fathers of the Church asking other to pray for them.

Prayer requests seem simple, but I struggle with them because God's version of how a situation should play out is always more complicated and interesting than any version of an outcome that I could pray for. As the Garth Brooks song says, "Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers."

As a child, I easily prayed for someone to be healed quickly or their life made easier. It's become harder as I move through adulthood and have been forced to realize both in my own life and the lives of others that horrible situations often make people better. These challenges can be essential to our development in faith, love, and humility.

The harsh reality of improvement through adversity is reflected in scripture. In the Old Testament, the Lord describes refining the Israelites through the "furnace of affliction." Isiah 48:10. This message continues on into the New Testament. "Consider it all a joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance." James 1:2-3. 

Similarly, "[A]lthough now for a little while you may have to suffer through various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that is perishable even though tested by fire, may prove to be for praise, glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." 1 Peter 1:6-7.

Should I pray that someone avoids a situation that could deepen their faith or play an essential role in turning their life around? 

If that prayer isn't answered, does it mean it wasn't heard?

When the situation goes beyond mere personal trials and towards death, simplistic prayers for a continuation of life are complicated by the belief that earthly death is an essential step to union with the Divine Love. 1 John 4:16.

Is it okay for me to pray for the delay of someone's journey to their spiritual destination? What if they are in horrible unending pain?

What does it mean for me and my faith if those prayers aren't answered?

Beyond that, what kind of prayer am I supposed to offer for enemies and persecutors as required by Matthew 5:44? Most of my attempts in that arena turn out pretty selfish, basically backhanded attempts to pray for myself.

Simplest answer that I've seen to these conundrums is a simple prayer described by Russian monk in 19th century Orthodox classic The Way of the Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way.

"Merciful Lord, may your will be done; you wish that all men come to the truth and be saved, have mercy and save your servant __________. Receive this petition from me, as a cry of love which you have commanded."

This humble method of asking for divine intervention is applicable to friends, family members, and foes alike. It leaves plenty of room for interpretation on the need and direction of help. It's applicable for both those who are struggling in earth and those on their way out of this life.

Please give it a try. This world is desperately in need of prayer.

Hanging Clothes Between Storms: Accepting Adversity

June 2013

I pulled the shirt from the bundle of clothes in my left hand and placed it on the white line. I pulled the fabric apart and it expanded in the breeze.

Five minutes before, wind would've whipped the shirt to the ground. The rain hammered onto our roof well into the clothes' spin cycle. Thunder rumbled. It threatened to hail. Then the storm gave way to calm.

I looked up from the clothes line and watched the storm push over East Helena to the Spokane Hills. Rain drops poured down in sheets. Lightning rippled and danced between the ground and the clouds. A small rainbow struggled in the middle of the storm. Churning in the maelstrom. It could not build up any more colors beyond a red glow.

I placed another sheet on the line. Not sure whether it would have time to dry or share the same fate as the rain-soaked rainbow. The late spring storms came in legions over Montana's Rocky Mountains. Storm then calm, then storm, then calm.

Still the laundry had to be hung. Like the rainbow, we don't always get to decide between the storm and the calm. Both will come and there is limited purpose in questioning why.

Life is a constant learning process. While I'm at the midway point of life, I haven't proceeded anywhere near that far on the path of learning. I have gotten far enough to be able to identify some of my earlier beliefs that were completely wrong.

Those wrong ideas more than outnumber the spring storms. The most glaring example may be the belief that I held as a youth and as a young man that men and women could work hard for years and decades to reach a point where life wouldn't be a struggle.

Now I realize that life's struggles are guaranteed whether they be personal, physical, financial, spiritual, or a combination. Clearing one hurdle will lead to another. The struggle can be embraced, but it cannot be removed or overcome. For participating in struggle of is essential to our time on Earth, proving our faith and love for the Divine.

It's a lesson taught in the lives of Job and Abraham, but the clearest statement in the New Testament may be when the mother of James and John asked Jesus to have her sons sit beside Jesus in his kingdom. Jesus asked them point blank, "Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?" Matthew 20:22.

This was not a question about experiencing peace, joy and happy times. Can you share in the struggle, suffering, and humiliation of the Cross?


It's the highest calling, but it can't be gained without the storm of adversity.


Note: Thanks to my sister-in-law Anastasia Gurinovich for taking this picture of the storm.

Running With the Current: Trials of Serving the Lord

Here is another installment of "Running the with Currrent." It's a powerful piece in Sirach on the trials of serving the Lord. I recorded the video on my way to Bozeman from Helena. I hope you like it.

matt


Text: Sirach 2:1-6

Background: Headwaters of the Missouri River near Three Forks, Montana.

A Little Charring is Not a Bad Thing

August 29, 2011

I drove to Kalispell last Tuesday to attend a Wednesday morning hearing of one of the Montana Legislature's interim committees.  The August sun beat down on the asphalt.  A hot breeze blew hard even at the top of McDonald Pass.  The beetle-killed pine trees lined the road in both directions and marched en masse to the horizon.

I took a right on Highway 83 from Highway 200, not far from where the Clearwater River dumps into the Blackfoot.  Both rivers were running low, lucky to pull any water away from the parched earth.  There was an orange sign on the side of the road that read fire crews ahead.

I couldn't help but think that it was amazing how I'd driven all this way through tinder-dry wilderness and this was the first sign I saw of wildfire.  It had been a wet June and July.  To my left, snow still capped some of the peaks of the Mission Mountains.

Montana was well on its way to escaping fire season relatively unscathed.  This would be the third year in a row - a minor miracle considering the fact that the pine beetle-ravaged trees caught fire easier than cheap charcoal.  Four years ago, the state had already been burning for two months by now.

Now we were preparing to have football season start before fire season had much more than kicked off.  I counted our blessings and continued driving north to Kalispell.

The next day, I traced my way back down Highway 83 through a smoky haze.  I figured that the Swan Lake fire had stirred up a bit over the night, but when I hit Highway 200 it was clear that the smoke was coming from more than one fire.  The Blackfoot River was cloaked from its headwaters on the Continental Divide until it dumped into the Clarkfork River 75 miles away.

I'm often wrong about things, but seldom does the level of wrongness become that clear, that fast.  Usually my wrongness tends to meander back and forth, just below the surface; until it finally pops up and sweeps me away.   I cleared my mind  and continued onto Butte where I had one more meeting, before heading home to Helena. 

I drove down Interstate 15 and into the Helena Valley that evening.  The sun was low in the West.  A huge cloud of smoke rose up in the sky from the North, beyond the Scratchgravel Hills.  It was obvious that we were on the front end of a miserable couple of weeks, if not months.

I couldn't help but think how often I misjudge life's adversity.  No matter how many times I'm proven wrong, I still think that if I do certain things or follow the right steps then things will be okay.  The chaos of life will settle down and drift along as gently as the Missouri River beneath Holter Dam.

Life doesn't have a Holter Dam.  Churning adversity will appear before us, no matter how hard we fight to avoid it.  When we clear that set of adversity another round will pop up from a direction that we do not expect.

In the midst of this turmoil, most of us will ask God to clear the way for us.  Sometimes those prayers will be answered, but for the most part they won't.  I will not hazard a guess about why some are answered and others are not, but I know that we are not called to paddle gently down the meandering river of life.  We are called to immerse ourselves in the struggle.

Often, it will feel that we're about to lose the fight.  The things that we fight to hold onto are ripped from our grasp; but, those losses are not as tangible or permanent as they appear.  The Divine scores our wins and losses differently.  As described by Jesus, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.  What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?" Mark 8:34-35.

It's a strange system and one that we are not meant to completely understand.  We build our life knowing that the fire will claim some of it and we will have to build again.  Success and failure falls on upon us all.  We love and we lose.  The task at hand, our general directions, and the final goal are the only givens.  Thankfully, that is enough.