Sunday: The Mastery of Prayer
WEEK 42
SUNDAY
THE MASTERY OF PRAYER
Luke 11:1-13
We come now to consider another mastery, an important one—the mastery of prayer. The mastery of the art of prayer is life’s most important mastery. It can be summed up in one sentence: If we know and practice the art of prayer, we know and practice the art of living; if we don’t know that art, then we don’t know the art of living. To pray is to penetrate, to penetrate through this physical encasement into the spiritual world of light and power and to live within this physical encasement by that spiritual light and power. We live in two worlds at once: the physical world interpenetrated by the spiritual and lifted to a new level of life. We can live literally by resources not our own; we can live by Another.
But while prayer is life’s most wonderful resource, it can be twisted and turned into all sorts of things. First, into a formula. A minister’s wife expounded at length on the beauty of the prayer book they used, and then added, “Do you really think that God answers prayer?” She thought of prayer as a formula but not as a fact. Does God answer prayer? The answer is that, just as God has made an open universe contingent upon our action—so that things won’t be done unless we do them, God has left certain things open to prayer—things that won’t be done unless we pray.
This is a universe of law and order, yet it is an open universe; things can happen within this universe if we decide to do them. The spiritual universe is also one of law and order and an open universe, open to cooperation with God for new things to happen. These are things that God wants to happen, but God can’t let them without our cooperation. Prayer is cooperation with God, cooperating in carrying out unfinished creative purposes. God wants us to help finish an unfinished universe. So in prayer, we do not have to overcome God’s reluctance; we only have to cooperate with God’s highest willingness. Anything that ought to happen can happen to the one who prays. That person has linked with divine purposes and has, therefore, divine power at his or her disposal for human living. The person of prayer is the person of power.
O Lord, I thank you that I am not at the mercy of a universe without heart and without purpose. I am aligned to you, and therefore anything right can happen. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am determined to learn the art of prayer, so I’ll make prayer my life climate today.