Praying for the Ex President

Each week I receive a slew of responses to recent columns. From time to time> I hear from a very articulate honest chap who suggests that I may not really be a Christian because I do not subscribe to certain supernatural doctrines he holds to be essential. After the invasion of the nation’s capitol, he asked if I were praying for the soon to be impeached president. So I look another look at this important religious discipline and how it impacts the question my responder raised.

What do we mean by prayer, and what might praying for the President really imply? Is prayer pleading to God, hoping that the divine intent and action might be altered, and that God would be persuaded to do what the pray-er suggests? We do not pray TO the subject about whom we are pleading, but on his/her behalf, asking God for mercy. I find it is often an exercise of arrogance to believe that God’s action will be altered by our pleading. But is that really what Christian prayer implies?

Or is it a hope not that God’s action might be changed, but that we may understand what God’s will is, and be brought into harmony with it. So prayer does not change the divine intention but may fundamentally be a discovery of what God wills. So it is not that God might be changed, but that we might be.

We are driven back to Jesus’ prayer when he committed himself to carrying out the divine intention: “THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.”

So the task of the pray-er is to be aligned in the here and now with the divine purpose. The question then becomes focused on our commitment to replicate on earth what is God’s heavenly rule. And that is what Jesus spent the rest of his life doing.

When we take on this task we seek to discover how the most mundane earthly matters respond to God’s divine intent. This is not rocket science, but common ordinary day by day action. So how are things on earth to be altered if they replicate God’s intention?

In God’s reign:
Swords will become plowshares and spears pruning hooks. War and all forms of violence will cease.
Every person is loved, and no one is left out.
The poor hear good news.
Captives are released.
Everyone receives health care. (sight to the blind)
Liberty comes to the oppressed.
No one is hungry.’
Women, children, outcasts, foreigners, the disabled are cared for.
There is an equitable sharing of the earth’s resources.
The natural world is sacred and is preserved.
Justice implies equity

These are just a few examples of what constitutes God’s hope for this world.

Prayer is not seeking to change God’s will, but to be aligned with it.

This notion of prayer takes shape in the here and now employing what tools we have been given including government, science, education, economics, international relations, immigration rules, environmental policies, religion and much more. Human lives invested in prayer seek that kind of divinely ordered world. Prayer is also much more than communing with the self. It rather puts the pray-er in touch with the unfathomable mystery at the center of all that is.

So I pray that I may be aware of God’s will, and seek to actualized it in me, and in my world.

Perhaps praying for the ex-president may be hoping to soften my heart in relationship to him. What is more, when someone knows that others are praying for them, they may find new strength and hope.

Prayer is an action. Brothers and sisters, pray without ceasing!