His journey is beautifully illustrated with moving true stories drawn from around the world. What difference does it make? Why and how should we pray? What about unanswered prayer? How should we understand prayer for physical healing? Focusing on such a universal theme, this is potentially Yancey's biggest book yet.
To date, his books have sold over 14 million copies, and have been translated into 25 languages. Get BOOK. Prayer Book Description:. His quest to unravel the mysteries of prayer reads as the journal of a fellow. Surely you know! When, after shrugging aside all his caustic theological queries, God enlightened hapless Job, the poor man crumbled.
I had no idea what I was asking. Job did not receive a single answer to his probing questions, a fact that no longer seemed to matter. Kicking and screaming all the way, I am still learning the lesson of Job. God needs no reminding of the nature of reality, but I do. The third rock from the sun, our planet, has spun off its theological axis.
There was a time, Genesis informs us, when God and Adam walked together in the garden and conversed as friends. Nothing seemed more natural for Adam than to commune with the One who had made him, who gave him creative work, who granted his desire for a companion with the lovely gift of Eve.
Then, prayer was as natural as conversation with a colleague, or a lover. Every day my vision clouds over so that I perceive nothing but a world of matter. For in him we live and move and have our being. For most of us, much of the time, prayer brings no certain confirmation we have been heard. We pray in faith that our words somehow cross a bridge between visible and invisible worlds, penetrating a reality of which we have. My home sits in a canyon in the shadow of a large mountain along a stream named Bear Creek.
During the spring snowmelt and after heavy rains the stream swells, tumbles frothily over rocks, and acts more like a river than a creek. Once I traced the origin of Bear Creek to its very source, atop the mountain. Underneath I could hear a soft gurgling sound, and at the edge of the snow, runnels of water leaked out. These collected into a pool, then a small alpine pond, then spilled over to begin the long journey down the mountain, joining other rivulets to take shape as the creek below my house.
It occurs to me, thinking about prayer, that most of the time I get the direction wrong. I start downstream with my own concerns and bring them to God. I inform God, as if God did not already know. Instead, I should start upstream where the flow begins. Grace, like water, descends to the lowest part. Streams of mercy flow.
Will I stand by the bank or jump in the stream? With this new starting point for prayer, my perceptions change. I look at nature and see not only wildflowers and golden aspen trees but the sig- nature of a grand artist. Thanksgiving and praise surge up as a natural response, not an obligation. I turn on the television and face a barrage of advertisements assuring me that success and achievement are measured by possessions and physical appearance. Can you help? The world obscures the view from above.
I awake from blindness to see that wealth lurks as a terrible danger, not a goal worth striving for; that value depends not on race or status but on the image of God every person bears; that no amount of effort to improve physical beauty has much relevance for the world beyond.
At one stop an old and ugly woman dressed in the uniform of the Salvation Army got on and found a seat nearby. The two lovers whispered to each other in Russian about how repulsive she looked. A few stops later the woman stood to exit. She opened his eyes, searing his vision in a way he would never forget. First, I must be still, something that modern life conspires against. Now they want email responses the same day and berate me for not using instant messaging or a mobile phone.
Mystery, awareness of another world, an emphasis on being rather than doing, even a few moments of quiet do not come naturally to me in this hectic, buzzing world. I must carve out time and allow God to nourish my inner life. On a walking pilgrimage to Assisi in Italy, the writer Patricia Hampl began to make a list in answer to the question, What is prayer?
She wrote down a few words. Fruitless whining and puling. Be still. In that focus, all else comes into focus. In that rift in my routine, the universe falls into alignment. In testimony given before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in South Africa, one black man told of crying out to God as the white officers attached electrodes to his body after beating him with trun- cheons.
They had been dethroned. Psalm 2 depicts God laughing in the heavens, scoffing at the kings and rulers arrayed in revolt. For the South African prisoner, or a pastor harassed in China, or believers persecuted in North Korea, it requires a great leap to attain that sublime faith, to believe that God is indeed exalted among the nations. We can stop doing all those important things we have to do in our capacity as God, and leave it to him to be God.
To let God be God, of course, means climbing down from my own execu- tive chair of control. I must uncreate the world I have so carefully fashioned to further my ends and advance my cause. Adam and Eve, the builders of. Bless You, Child R einer.
How well I remember my first real prayer. I looked up at the stars in the sky and felt connected to the universe. At age twelve, I had found my place, a whole new identity.
A few minutes later I came back down to earth as my mother yelled at me for coming home so late. I tried to explain, but she could not understand. For three days I did not eat.
She was right. Prayer seemed a kind of social skill. Oddly enough, it came easier when I traveled from Germany to the U. Praying in my new language, English, forced me to be more aware and authentic. Babel, Nebuchadnezzar, the South African guards, not to mention all who struggle with addictions or even ego, know well what is at stake. Aliens For several years I have tried to help a Japanese family, the Yokotas, in their desperate search for justice. In their thirteen-year-old daughter Megumi vanished on her way home from badminton practice after school.
Eventually I became a pastor. Sometimes I had the feeling that the words I spoke to them at such a moment became a prayer. I realized that more than two of us were present. I also became a father, with a daughter and a son. As they slept, I would step into their rooms, make the sign of the cross over them, and pray for their future. A parent has such little control. You have to fall back on God. My son has epilepsy.
His first grand mal seizure terrified me. We called for an ambulance, and I held him in my arms as his head shook from side to side, stroking his forehead, trying to say calming words while inside I felt the opposite of calm. Consciously I tried to pour my spirit into his, to take on his pain.
Prayer for me has become a form of blessing. Bless you, I would say to the parishioners who laid bare their stories. Bless you, I would say while holding my convulsing son. I want to feel that blessing for myself, in prayer. Sometimes I thrash and tremble, like my son during a seizure. Scores of Japanese, he said, had been kidnapped and forced to teach Korean spies the Japanese language and culture. Five returned to Japan, but North Koreans insisted the other eight had died, including Megumi who, they said, in had used a kimono to hang herself.
All over Japan, prayer groups sprang up to support the abductees. Yokota traveled across the globe in her quest for justice, becoming in the process one of the most familiar faces on Japanese media. Bush, who took up her cause. Two other photos showed her as an adult, a woman in her thirties standing outdoors in a winter coat.
The Yokotas fondled the photos over and over, finding some solace in the fact that the later photos showed their daughter looking healthy and reasonably well-cared-for.
Had she met with other abductees and conversed with them to keep from forgetting her mother tongue? What had helped her remember who she was: not an immi- grant to North Korea but a Japanese taken captive against her will? Had she tried to sneak a message back to them? Attempted an escape? What memo- ries did she retain of her life in Japan, life as their daughter?
How many times had Megumi looked toward the island of Japan and scoured newspapers in search of clues of her former home? On a trip to Asia in , I was asked to speak to the combined prayer groups in Tokyo. I agonized over what I might say to bring comfort to the family and concerned friends. All these, like Megumi, must have struggled to retain a memory of who they were: aliens swept into a new and strange culture. For him, for the other believers living in foreign lands, and perhaps for Megumi as well, prayer was the main reminder of a reality contradicted by all surroundings.
A channel of faith, it served to restore the truth belied by everything around them. For us, too, prayer can be that channel. Why pray? I have asked it when I read theology, wondering what use there may be in repeating what God must surely know. My conclusions will unfold only gradually, but I begin here because prayer has become for me much more than a shopping list of requests to present to God. It has become a realignment of everything.
I pray to restore the truth of the universe, to gain a glimpse of the world, and of me, through the eyes of God. In prayer I shift my point of view away from my own selfishness. I climb above timberline and look down at the speck that is myself.
I gaze at the stars and recall what role I or any of us play in a universe beyond comprehension. Open navigation menu. Close suggestions Search Search. User Settings. Skip carousel. Carousel Previous. Carousel Next. What is Scribd? Explore Ebooks. Bestsellers Editors' Picks All Ebooks. Explore Audiobooks. Bestsellers Editors' Picks All audiobooks. Explore Magazines. Editors' Picks All magazines.
0コメント