Month: October 2024

Categories
Religious

Gratitude Begins with God

The following meditation is from Dr. Doug Hood’s upcoming book: A Month of Prayer & Gratitude: Five-Minute Meditations for a Deeper Experience of Gratitude.

“Though the fig tree doesn’t bloom, and there’s no produce on the vine; though the olive crop withers, and the fields don’t provide food; though the sheep is cut off from the pen, and there is no cattle in the stalls; I will rejoice in the Lord. I will rejoice in the God of my deliverance.” Habakkuk 3:17, 18 (Common English Bible)

In our nation’s ritual observance of Thanksgiving Day, we are summoned to express gratitude for what we have. We may have little when measured against our neighbor, but we are, nonetheless, called to acknowledge what we do have and express gratitude. We know the story, the origin of this national holiday well. English immigrants—later to be called Pilgrims—sailed by accident into Cape Cod harbor, staked their claim upon the land, and named it New Plymouth. These immigrants, these Pilgrims, labored hard working the land, fought disease, and defended themselves against every threat this strange new frontier presented. Life produced struggle upon struggle. But they persisted. Then, in 1621, the harvest exceeded every expectation. To celebrate their good fortune, a harvest festival was held to which they invited the native Americans who occupied the land first.

As a child, I would be reminded by my mother and father that Thanksgiving Day was an occasion to “count my blessings.” As I consider this instruction, it seems to me that there is nothing wrong with a regular habit of doing so—counting my blessings. I have provided the same guidance to my children. Focusing on what I have versus what I don’t have is a mindset that must be intentional. For some reason, I find that many of us have a default setting to do just the opposite. Many days, I am caught up in complaints—usually in silence. I don’t have enough, whatever “enough” may be. If I dwell there long enough, I grow convinced that I have been cheated. If you have traveled this same route, you know it is an unpleasant journey. Then, I am reminded of the wisdom taught me so many years ago—count my blessings, regardless of how meager those blessings may be.

The difficulty with this Scripture from the minor prophet, Habakkuk, is that it seems to invite us in the opposite direction. At first blush, this seems to be a well-rehearsed complaint: the fig tree doesn’t bloom, and there’s no produce on the vine, and on and on. Sounds familiar, like a child who is struggling through a difficult day. The only difference between the child and the adult is that many adults have learned restraint. We feel as strongly as the child about what we don’t have, but we have learned to keep our lips sealed. Our lips may conceal what is on our hearts, but rarely is it a secret to others. When our lips are sealed, our general continence betrays us. Others see our dissatisfaction, our annoyance, our general selfishness. Then, as we are reading the Bible, we stumble upon these words from Habakkuk. Permission granted for making our complaint! Or so it seems until we keep reading.

We are jolted by a speed bump in verse 18. After a considerable complaint, the prophet Habakkuk concludes with gratitude! A bleak and depressing picture is painted for us and is then completed with, “I will rejoice in the Lord. I will rejoice in the God of my deliverance.” It appears that someone has confused the lyrics of one song, a song of complaint, with the lyrics of another song, a song of gratitude. One doesn’t follow another, not smoothly anyway. Failure and loss move rather quickly to a celebration of hope and confidence. How does the prophet explain this disjointed movement? It may be that we have gratitude all wrong. Perhaps gratitude doesn’t begin with what we have. Perhaps gratitude doesn’t even begin with us. If we lean into the pages of this prophet, what we learn is that gratitude begins with God, with God’s fidelity, and that we are included in God’s redemption. Gratitude begins when we realize we belong to God.

Joy,

Categories
Religious

God’s Apparent Inattention to Prayer

The following meditation is from Doug Hood’s upcoming book: A Month of Prayer & Gratitude: Five-Minute Meditations for a Deeper Experience of Gratitude.

“How long will you forget me, Lord? Forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” Psalm 13:1 (Common English Bible)

The critic Guy Davenport wrote that translation is a game of two languages, and that “the translator is in constant danger of inventing a third that lies between.”[1] The language of the Christian faith is often characterized as one where God is responsive to prayer. The language of lived experience suggests that, on occasion, God is inattentive to prayer. What is the translator to do—how does a person of faith translate a “responsive God” to the occasional experience of an “inattentive God?” Often, the translation—or explanation—is that the prayer lacked sufficient faith or that the prayer failed to follow some prescribed rubric or pattern. The tragic result is a third language, a God that is responsive only if the prayer has been constructed properly or is undergirded by an unwavering and sturdy faith. The third language is unrecognizable to the people of the Bible, particularly the psalmist. It is a language that suggests that effective prayer is dependent upon us, not God.

Psalm 13 is the shortest of the prayers that seek help from God in the Book of Psalms. At the beginning of this prayer is a rhetorical question, “How long?” The question is asked four times in the first two verses. Information isn’t sought. A response is sought from a God that seems unresponsive. The individual who makes this prayer is in distress. An urgent neediness is presented to God, and the expectation is that God will show up and answer, consistent with the understood character of God. Excuses for God’s inattentiveness are not offered; God is not let off the hook. This is a powerful witness of refusal to inventing a third language. God is known as a responsive God. So, where are you God? As James L. Mays makes clear, “God does not help; there is no evidence of God’s attention and care. Anxiety tortures the mind with painful questions.”[2] The named experience resonates with our own when we are impatient and desperate. Our questions about God’s apparent inattention are not unfaithful.

It is important that the reader—the one who is eavesdropping on this urgent prayer—understand that the psalmist is not releasing their frustrations upon another. It isn’t unusual for the faithful to speak to another of their disappointment with God. Many times, that is the preferred approach—sharing with a friend, rather than directly to God, a disappointment or hurt with a God that seems inattentive. This seems safer, less dangerous, than a direct and frank conversation with God on such matters. What is suspended in such moments is the recognition that nothing can be kept from God. God is privileged to our conversations as well as our thoughts. Just as Adam and Eve sought to hide from God, we participate in the self-deception that we can vent our frustrations about God to another without God’s knowledge. Why risk stirring God’s anger with such a blunt approach? Here, the psalmist does. God has let them down, or so the psalmist believes. Why not an honest conversation with God?

This bold move, this courageous exercise of faith, in turning directly to a God who seems inattentive, grants permission to the reader to do the same. The psalmist’s unflinching honesty before God demonstrates a confidence in God’s love and care for the well-being of the faithful. This nervy move reminds the reader of another man of God named Job. Job never flinched before God in demanding an answer for his suffering. The answer never came to Job. Yet, in time, God does demonstrate faithfulness to Job with the return of good things. What we find in Job’s story is that the individuals who feared holding God accountable received God’s rebuke. The psalmist in this prayer doesn’t receive an answer either. What to do with God’s apparent inattentiveness? The psalmist chooses gratitude. “Yes, I will sing to the Lord because he has been good to me” (Psalm 13:6). Choosing to give up on God was not an option for this one who asks God, “How long?” Such a choice only results in a life of despair.

[1] Wood, Graeme. “The Iliad We’ve Lost,” The Atlantic, November 2023, 83.

[2] Mays, James L. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, Psalms. Louisville: John Knox, 1994, 78.

Categories
Religious

Foundations

The following meditation is from Dr. Doug Hood’s upcoming book, A Month of Prayer & Gratitude: Five-Minute Meditations for a Deeper Experience of Gratitude.

“The Lord your redeemer who formed you in the womb says: I am the Lord, the maker of all, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself.”

Isaiah 44:24 (Common English Bible)

Foundations are important. In the construction of a building, a strong and reliable foundation is a primary consideration. The function of the building and its location are important matters for determining which materials are necessary. Without attending to the matter of a proper foundation, further construction becomes a foolish—and risky—enterprise. Similarly, a meaningful and purposeful life requires a sturdy foundation. The materials for such a foundation include unconditional love, encouragement, and support. But other matters are important, too! These include education or vocational training, a safe environment for failure and learning from that failure, and career guidance or mentoring. Yet, the most important matter is to know where we come from. Who are our parents? Were we adopted? What can we know of our heritage? Self-concept and identity are forged from this knowledge.

This passage from Isaiah shows that the people of Israel have lost their way. Their home, Jerusalem, has been destroyed, and they are a people in exile. Such disorientation is a poor foundation for rebuilding their future as a nation. It is in this disorientation, this emotional and spiritual place of despair and hopelessness, that the prophet Isaiah speaks. He reminds the people that they were formed in the womb by God—the same God who is the maker of all, who alone stretched out the heavens and spread out the earth. Israel, Isaiah cries, has not been left alone! And as a people who were created, fashioned, and formed by such a God, they are a people who belong. Isaiah reaffirms once again their relationship—their foundation—with their God. And it’s this relationship that has continued on throughout the ages unto this very day.

Understand, however, that we shouldn’t make the mistake of assuming that God belongs to us. Allan Hugh Cole Jr. shares a poignant metaphor he once learned that: “acting as if God somehow belongs to us can have a direct effect on prayer and faith. For example, it can lead to our viewing God as a commodity that exists primarily to serve us and our self-interests, rather than leading us to serve God and God’s interest. Moreover, we can begin treating God as ‘a cosmic Coke machine,’ such that we merely need to offer God some sort of payment (i.e., good deeds, the right prayers, acts of kindness, various sacrifices), put in our requests, and expect to receive something in return from God immediately.”[1] This incorrect notion that our relationship with God is purely transactional is a poor foundation for a faith that can navigate life’s discouragements and heartbreaks—it’s a foundation that cannot sustain us.

A life of faith and prayer that disappoints may be the product of a poorly laid foundation. Instead of seeking a relationship with God, we might pray, “God, I will give you this if you give me that.” Another poor foundation may be casting God in our own image rather than the other way around: we might depict God as an extension of ourselves, our desires, our needs, and our political ideology. We want God to see the world as we see it—we want God to be a certain way. This is a foundation that negatively impacts our prayers and shakes our faith. God does not operate under our control. As the prophet Isaiah reminds us, we belong to God. The only foundation for a robust life of prayer and faith is one where we seek to know God, God’s dreams, and God’s aspirations—it is one where we remember that God has created us and not the other way around.

Joy,

[1] Cole Jr, The Life of Prayer, 15.

Categories
Religious

Conditions of Answered Prayers

“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.”

John 15:7 (Common English Bible)

Ernest Hemingway captures the deep disquiet among many who are faithful in the practice of prayer, Christians who go to their knees in prayer but quietly question just how much they can expect from God. Distressed by doubts, a lack of confidence in God’s ability—or desire—to respond to prayer plagues their practice of prayer. In his short story, The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio, Sister Cecilia expresses her heartfelt desire to be a saint—a faithful, sincere desire that she has carried since she was a little girl. Sister Cecilia was absolutely convinced that if she renounced the world and went into the convent, she would become a saint. Now, years later, she still waits for her prayer to be fulfilled. Mr. Frazer, the protagonist of the story, responds to her, “You’ll be one. Everybody gets what they want. That’s what they always tell me.” But Sister Cecilia expresses doubt, “Now it seems almost impossible.”[1]

The great nineteenth-century preacher Phillips Brooks once addressed this common difficulty so many people have with prayer—explaining that the Gospel of John identifies two qualities shared by those who can hope to pray successfully. First, what does it mean to “remain in me.”?[2] It is a phrase that is familiar in the New Testament. To offer clarity, Brooks asks that we think of a child in their earliest years. Those are the years children are so completely absorbed or “hidden” in their parent’s life that you do not look upon them as a separate individual. They are expressions of their parent’s nature. The child’s thoughts and speech are nearly echoes of the parent. In these earliest years, we hear a child utter something, and immediately we know what has been spoken by the parents in earshot of the child. The parent acts and thinks for the child; the child acts and thinks as the parent. Similarly, we “remain” in Christ as we grow closer to Christlikeness.

The second condition of successful prayer is in the words “and my words remain in you.” This is the continual and instinctive reference of the definite, explicit teachings and commands of Christ, asserts Brooks. This second condition is not separable from the first—the first is remaining in Christ. In Christ, it is impossible to do anything, say anything, or desire anything but just what is the Lord’s will. Yet, that is incomplete, imperfect, and unreliable without some positive and definite announcement of it in our own words. Returning to the image of the child, words spoken are but echoes of what is heard. To “remain” in Christ necessarily produces the thoughts and words of Christ—a striving to full obedience to the teachings of Christ. Brooks eloquently puts it this way: the soul’s remaining in Christ makes ready to accept Jesus’ words, and then the words lead into a deeper utterance of the desires of God’s heart.

Returning to Hemingway’s short story, Sister Cecilia’s prayer for much of her life was that she might become a saint. Discouraged that the prayer remains unanswered she concludes that it may be an impossible prayer. Readers of this short story identify with her—we also have prayers that seem to remain unanswered year after year. How do we reconcile unanswered prayer with the promise that whatever we ask will be done? Perhaps the difficulty is that we jumped with hearts so eager to receive that we fail to notice the prior conditions here in John’s Gospel. Ultimately, prayer is about one thing—joining our lives so completely with Christ’s that Christ’s life and ministry continue through us. Prayer is a commitment to reverse the departure of our lives from the life and purposes of Jesus. As we strive to return our lives back to Christ and to “remain” there and have Christ’s words remain in us, our prayers take on fresh power.

Joy,

[1] Hemingway, Ernest. “The Gambler, The Nun, and The Radio,” The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories. New York: Scribner Classics, 2009, 49.

[2] Brooks, Phillips. “Prayer,” The Battle of Life and Other Sermons. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1893, 297.