More on Prayer

"And Jesus told this parable to teach his disciples that they should always pray and never give up."

I was reading the Bible with a friend last night and we came across the story of Moses, Aaron and Hur on the mountain supporting the Israelites in their battle with the Amalekites. Staff up: Israel prevails, Staff down: Amalek prevails. Intriguing. Also the story of the death bed of Elisha. "You should have hit the ground five or six times, then you would have completely defeated the Arameans" Similarly intriguing.

Much mind effort has gone into explaining (perhaps explaining away) the necessity of intercessory prayer. We are at some pains to explain to ourselves that really after all, God is all powerful. What difference could anything that we could do have on him and his sovereign program or plan? And yet, strangely he calls us into this exercise that our minds have just led us to think futile. Does he really want to shackle himself to our inconstancy? And if we don't pray, does his will just not get done?

Well I don't know. I almost don't want to know. More and more as I pray I feel myself burn inside. I long for this thing called the kingdom of God, this thing of which I have no clear picture, just glimpses and inklings and oh-if-onlies. I long that people would be able to grasp who Jesus really is and start to pursue him en masse. I long for powerful revelation to break the voluntary blindness of my generation, so that people would be without excuse and would cease to have the option of hiding behind science because science itself would be superseded by the author of all mysteries revealing himself in power. Yeah.

Well, all I can say is I'm thankful God lets me in on his work through prayer. I hope my apathetic rationality is really wrong and my prayers mean something to the coming of the kingdom. I trust they do.