Or, at least that I have several separate understandings of prayer; none comprehensive, some necessarily exclusive.
Sometimes I think that we pray to change things. I believe with all of my heart that prayer changes things. If we didn't believe prayer changes things, why would we pray for things to be changed?
I pray for the dead sometimes. After Zach's suicide I begged God for mercy; for him. Sometimes I wonder if I pray to the dead, too. I talk to Aunt Mabel sometimes. I ask her to talk to the "Big Guy" for me. I figure that if anyone has any pull in Heaven it would be her. I don't think these things are theologically correct or accurate ... but I still do them.
Steven Greenberg is an Orthodox rabbi. He believes that we can petition God for the change of God's mind. Most famously, Rabbi Greenberg leads a group of gay and lesbian orthodox jews in prayer asking God to change the Biblical stance on homosexuality. While his views are quickly dismissed by most, he has a valid point. In the Bible, people argued and debated with God until God changed his mind.
He cites the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, an odd choice of text for a pro-gay theologian, where Abraham pleads with God to save Sodom if only 50 righteous people can be found. Then he jews God down to 45. 30. 20. 10. Openness Theologians point to passages where God "hopes" and servants of the Almighty challenge and find compromise with God.
Sometimes I think that we only talk to God for our own benefit. That we pray primarily for the connectedness to God. I'm not implying that our prayers are futile, just that the primary benefactor isn't the subject about whom we pray but ourselves. Prayer (and meditation) has wonderful, medically proven effects on the body. If a Christian doesn't believe he or she can change the will or mind of God, is his or her prayer exclusively to stay connected to something bigger?
In the New Testament, no one ever prays for a persons salvation. Jesus prays for more workers for the harvest, but not that people would be saved. In our churches we pray for people's salvation all the time. Almost as much as we pray for the sick and the dying.
I'm reading Train Go Sorry, a book about growing up as a hearing person at a deaf school. It sums up a few of my thoughts on prayer. In the story, the teachers and pupils are in a state of constant misunderstanding. The school looked down on American Sign Language and instead taught the students to mimic sounds they couldn't hear. Teachers used tongue depressors of various shapes to teach the kids how to hold their mouths while they vibrate the vocal chords they can't hear. The students read the teacher's lips and sounded out words to respond to the instructor. Although most of the students knew sign language, many of the teachers did not.
Maybe when we pray we are speaking a language we don't quit understand, but one that God understands. Although we don't hear the sounds, they are there and with patience and training the sounds will be correct and will form words.
I think that there's a disconnect in our prayers. Maybe we don't understand. Should we really just pray for God's will all the time like helpless minnows being carried down stream? Or are we to be like the salmon and fight the current upstream? Is it okay to make demands of God?
My friend Deepa R. Joseph tells of her mother's prayers, in her native India, her mother would pray, "God you will provide dinner tonight. We have served you and my children will not go hungry." They never went hungry.
I have a secret hope that God answers the prayers of children more than the rest of us; that our prayers are weighted ~ and it's not the windbag prayer from the pulpit but the tears shed in Dora the Explorer nightgowns that God answers most readily.
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