I hope that title felt like a paradox to you, because what I’m about to share with you today feels very much like a paradox. But first, could I start off with a story?
Kendall is an educator in the public schools, is almost finished with seminary, and is an avid lover of books, nature, and long walks. She is easily distracted by thunderstorms and loves a good conversation over coffee.
Actually, I’ll tell you two:
When I was a teenager, I had a dear friend named Sarah. One day, we were driving around in her sporty little car and pulled up next to a school bus at a stop light. We looked up at the cute kids with their faces peering out the windows and she said, “Isn’t it sad when you become old enough to know that just because it’s cloudy, that doesn’t mean it’s going to snow?” She was bemoaning the fact that, at some point, we begin to know better. Rather than looking out the window and seeing clouds and thinking it could snow anytime, we realize that the temperatures have to be below freezing, there has to be a storm system close enough to produce enough precipitation, and then if conditions are right (especially in Kansas!) we might get some snow. Maybe. Truly, her comment has stuck with me. It describes that loss of wonder.
My second story is an often-retold story in my extended family. First, let me just say that that I am a meteorologist wannabe. I love any kind of stormy weather and have had a few experiences “chasing” storms (or being chased by them) that I love to retell. When I was pregnant with our first child, I prayed that there would be thunderstorms during his birth. His birthday is the end of March (storm season!) and what would be more fun than going through hours of labor in a thunderstorm? My thought exactly. So I prayed to that end. The reason we retell this story frequently is because we got so much rain that my dad had to leave the hospital where they’d been waiting to meet their grandson to drive 45 minutes to his house to check to make sure the sump pump was running because the rain turned into a deluge! I prayed for storms, and they came.
Maybe.
It’s silly to pray for rain, right? In our modern world with our scientific advances—we don’t have to pray for this stuff—we can know! Rather than pray for rain, we can pull up our weather app, check the radar, and then find out from the 10-day forecast how many more days we have to wait.
Our town just got the snowfall of the decade last weekend where 10”-12” piled up in one day. That is extremely rare! But again, we knew it was coming. The meteorologists had been warning us for a week.
Modern scientific knowledge can certainly make our lives easier. And this extends to more areas than just weather! Think about the advances that have been made in medicine: in the past 100 years we have made tremendous gains in our ability to diagnose, treat, and manage diseases and conditions that a century ago would have meant certain death. We have MRIs and PETs and x-rays and a myriad of tests that I am unfamiliar with (thank goodness!) that determine exactly what is wrong and give doctors critical data to know how to treat us. What a miracle!
The things we used to have to pray for, we can now just know! (Saves us time and energy!)
After all, do our prayers even work? I mean, does God really adjust the jet stream in our favor to bring rain, snow, wind, heat, or storms depending on ours prayers? SURELY NOT.
In central Kansas, we have dealt with some severe drought over the past few years. Summers where we get little to no rain. With temperatures in the 90s and 100s, that can feel oppressive. So I check my 10-day forecast and bemoan the fact that no rain is in sight. Let’s move somewhere where things actually grow, I tell my husband.
And then I remember growing up in a small, farming community in northern Kansas. When the drought and heat would come, we would gather in the town square and pray for rain together. They still do this, I’m told.
So I meekly pray for rain and continue to watch the forecast. God, you know our needs. Please send rain!
I told you this blog would contain a bit of paradox today. One way to describe paradox is a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory.
I love this. It describes perfectly the conundrum in which we find ourselves when we, as perfectly intelligent, thoughtful, 21st century humans wrestle with the idea that maybe we should pray and let God know what we need.
Please send rain for our crops!
Please heal my daughter from this chronic pain!
Please heal the relationship between my brother and I!
Please provide for our financial needs!
Here we are, as enlightened people living with all the information the world has ever known EVER…(sound reasoning from acceptable premises)…trying to figure out how to pray and if prayer works and what we should be expecting from prayer.
Talking to a God who lives in heaven and changes weather systems and cellular functioning and decades-old family patterns and interrupting the economic system of our country? Preposterous.
(See? “a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory”.)
Paradox.
The audacious claim of the Christian Scriptures is that we should be praying because God hears our prayers. We don’t worship a God who is aloof and absent. We worship a God who is intimately involved with Creation and longs to meet our needs!
“And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” Eph. 6:18
“Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.” James 5:13
“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Mark 11:24
“The LORD detests the sacrifice of the wicked, but the prayer of the upright pleases him.” Prov. 15:8
“May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.” Psalm 141:2
Here’s the paradox and the challenge for us as Christians: we are asked to “present our requests to God” (Phil. 4:6) asking God for the things that we need and desire. And. We also live in a world where every single piece of information is at our fingertips.
Last week Tyler wrote an incredible blog post about salvation. Read it here, if you haven’t. In it, he mentioned that part of our call is to learn to accept the good things that God desires for us—and he named both “dependence” and “humility”. I think that learning to pray despite knowing it all is one way that we can exercise these skills.
Because here’s what is most true:
We don’t actually know it all. You only have to stalk your weather app to know that this is true. Listen, I have nothing against meteorologists (just ask me—I have my favorites!)—they are doing their job with the instruments and data they have. But the weather and forecasts change all the time. It is an untame-able science.
And, God is the God of weather, of medicine, of technology, of relationships, of the entire cosmos! Consider the stories of Jesus calming a storm (Lk. 8:22-25), raising Lazarus (John 11) and healing sick people (Mk. 5:21-43), collapsing the brilliant thinking of the scholars of his day (Mark 12:13-39), healing broken relationships (Lk. 19:1-10) and defeating the powers of sin and death (John 20:1-10)!
This same Jesus is calling us to depend on him, to surrender to him in humility.
God longs to meet our needs. God longs for us to see that we have needs that need to be met.
And one way we do this is through prayer.
What a bold faith to pray in trust that God would provide for our needs even when all other data suggests that it’s impossible.
That, my friends, is called a paradox.