Leading From The Center
Summer 2007
Prayer in Difficult Times
by The Rev. Susan W. N. Ruach, Ed.D.
In 1995 I was attending the Clergywomen’s Consultation in Atlanta. My mother had died two months before and my dad was in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s. There was a prayer time, in which individuals came to microphones to offer their prayer requests. As I listened praying for each one, I began to notice that often the person would make a specific request followed by a more general one such as “I pray for your healing of Candice who has just be diagnosed with breast cancer and for all who are struggling with cancer.” or “Lord, be with Jackie and Phil who are having marital trouble and for all who are having problems in their marriage.” My prayer then was for my father and for all who were caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s. Each person was sharing her concern and generalizing it to others in the same situation. Their difficult times became the occasion to pray for others as well. It is one way to pray when a difficult time comes.
No one escapes difficult times. When the difficult time comes to Christians, we are inclined to pray. And as the pastor, when we pray with persons during their difficult times, our prayers not only connect to God, but also our prayers in such situations help teach, frame situations and give perspective to the hearts and minds of the people involved.
And what about the collective difficult times—war, weather emergencies, violence in the streets? How do we pray most faithfully in difficult times?
In this issue of Leading from the Center Neil Christie, Assistant General Secretary at the General Board of Church and Society explores praying faithfully in the midst of difficult times. My favorite sentence is “I also know that my own behavior gradually begins to resemble what I pray about and that my language makes a difference.” I will sit with that statement for a long time. There are also wonderful questions for us to ponder in this article.
In addition, Tony Peterson reviews Prayers for Hope and Prayers for Courage. Tony is a New Solutions Project Manager at the General Board of Discipleship.
In all times but especially in difficult times, may God teach us how to pray.
The Rev. Susan W. N. Ruach, ED.D. is Team Leader, Conference Spiritual Leadership Development at the General Board of Discipleship in Nashville, TN.
How Do I Pray For My Neighbor?
by Neil Christie
I was seven years old when my family visited India for the first time. This was during the 1971 war between India and Pakistan. I recall searching for shelter on the street of my parents’ home town, Surat, uncertain if the air raids were only practice drills or the real thing. So I prayed. Several months later, I was elated when my parents gave us the news that India had won the war. Then, when I was fifteen years old I had a new neighbor. He was a boy my age named Zharar Beg. Zharar was from Pakistan. Zharar was Muslim, not a Christian. We ate the same food, laughed at the same jokes, hung out with the same friends, and watched the same movies. But one day, Zharar told me what it was like to watch airplanes come over the border from India into Pakistan. He described how his family trembled with fear and anger as they heard bombs drop. And they prayed. In 1971 Zharar would have been my enemy. In 1979 we were friends. I wondered whose childhood prayers God heard during the war. Who are my neighbors? How do I pray for them?
My own experience pales in comparison to the tens of millions who suffer varying degrees of violence every day, ranging from intentional neglect at home to premeditated, protracted international aggression. In church, I have grown to expect emotionally distraught parishioners request prayers for their daughter, followed then by a more general request for prayers of protection for all U.S. combat troops serving in Iraq. Another parishioner mourns the death of his nephew who died as a humanitarian aid worker distributing food in Lebanon, and a third person offers up an angry prayer concerning the death of Israeli children killed by a suicide bomber. Across the aisle a parishioner chooses to pray quie tly because she fears that her prayer for the souls of the terrorists might distance her from the congregation. Who are my neighbors? How do I pray for them?
And how do we confront and decry all-too-routine hatred and violence with the sincerity and deep compassion of the Christian life? How do I live out the mishpat – justice, sadiqah – righteousness, and hesed – steadfast love that I long for in Christ? Do we really hear the Christ’s call for a more just community and offer our silent prayer in response? Do we truly empathize with another’s experience of violence and allow their experience to reside in our prayer life? Or do we stop short of this by praying for their protection and for our own? Do we bite our lips and reinforce with lit tle or no critique unspoken assumptions about the violated and violator, the inadequacy of international entities to achieve peace, or the cause and effect of neo-colonial occupation? And along the way do we acquit the war-making interests, strategies, and tactics that force us to choose life over life? In our prayers, do we raise up stories of people’s selfless efforts for peace and call our congregations to their own accountability for the violence?
Praying for pre-emptive peace means we name what makes for peace in the concrete:
Individually and as church families, we generate and explore options, appreciate possible avenues of advocacy with persons and organizations of influence, and protest those that refuse to admit to violence. We organize ourselves by mutual obligations and seek collaborative alliances for violence prevention. We do this all in the name of Christ and as a spiritual discipline that holds us open to God and God’s work in our lives and in all the world
When congregations try to image “peace”, they often lose themselves in describing abstractions. When we ask a congregation to imagine the words and phrases we associate with war, descriptions are concrete and specific. I also know that my own behavior gradually begins to resemble what I pray about and that my language makes a difference. Prayer in the context of protracted violence is an act of unusual faith. Churches that treat prayer as a disciplined process for promoting peaceful intervention will attempt to:
These suggestions are only a start. Our common liturgical acts can oppose a culture of violence and offer mindful and meaningful, culturally relevant connection with the mystery of God’s love.
Archbishop Despond Tutu was able to steer a post-apartheid nation away from national amnesia or a victor’s justice to a form of restorative justice through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The work of the Commission was a form of collective prayer and an incarnational form of collective prayer and ritual. Mothers of the Disappeared marched in Argentina and Women in Black march in Jerusalem. Christian Peacemaking Teams in Hebron and Baghdad and their humble and courageous physical acts serve as contemplative prayer in action. These too are ritual prayers of confession and cleansing for an alternative future.
While we may not be called to witness in places far away, we are called to witness and pray in the depths of our being for God’s shalom. Our very soul intention, voice and will—is formed in the liminal substance and space of prayer. Our spiritual identity, perception, and commitment to non-violent action are shaped by our prayer. We pray to love our enemies because we see that we are intrinsically related to them. Do we see ourselves in them? Who we see when we visualize our enemies, speaks volumes about who we see ourselves to be.
In the end and over time we become the quality of mercy, justice and love for which we pray.
Neil Christie is Assistant General Secretary at the General Board of Church and Society. For more information on resources, consultations and training go to www.umc-gbcs.org/livingfaith.
Prayers For Hope & Prayers For Courage
by Tony Peterson
In the immediate wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, GBOD staff asked ³How should we respond?² The result was Prayers for Hope, an Upper Room resources patterned partly after the Upper Room Daily Devotional magazine. The 32-page booklet includes eight pages of devotions similar in style to the parent magazine, with suggested scripture reading, a personal story, a prayer suggestion and a thought for the day. The balance of the collection is mostly scripture. A few prayers and a particularly helpful reflection page round out the collection. All focus on the hope we can draw from in times of natural disaster.
The Upper Room staff had some experience with this sort of resource. At the announcement in 2003 of the of the current Middles East war, GBOD also asked the question "How should we respond?"
The result was Prayers for Courage, the first in a series of booklets called Pocket Prayers. Prayers for Courage was billed as an extra issue of the Upper Room Devotional magazine. This first offering was actually a collection of prayers and scripture The prayers were drawn largely from the archives of Alive Now another spiritual magazine published by Upper Room Ministries.
Developed in less than two weeks, the booklet was sent to chaplains overseas for distribution to those serving in the armed forces. They were also available for churches to acquire to encourage prayer for those serving .
The value of these resources came home to me recently. Before I even took my seat on the flight home from Detroit, the young man who would be my seatmate extended his hand. " Hi, I¹m Carter," he said. Thus began an hour-long conversation, which touched on topics including family, war, faith and duty.
Carter was on a short pass away from his US Army post. He has yet to see action in the current conflict, but already he was introspective. He said to me "You know, it¹s not easy trying to fit with your Christian faith with your duty to obey a command to kill someone." Carter¹s introspection was refreshing. Too often we gloss over those complexities on the way to our particular ideologies concerning war in general or any war in particular.
The Upper Room actually had in mind people like Carter, who was trying to reconcile his faith with his occupational and patriotic duty. And they thought of those who have been directly affected by hurricanes and other natural disasters But the developers also had in mind the loved ones of those directly involved. Those loved ones may be family friends, or strangers who become pray-ers. We all need, as the subtitle states "Words of Faith for Difficult Times."
Tony Peterson is a New Solutions Project Manager at the General Board of Discipleship in Nashville, TN.