James 5

Sunday, March 10, 2013

James 5

The book of James ends with an interesting warning/admonition about prayer - reminding us that prayer is powerful.  James talks about how Elijah prayed for a drought and then prayed to end it, and warns us to be careful in our own prayers.

We can't any of us imagine what it must have been like to spend three years in close contact with Jesus.  If there were not daily wonders, there were enough signs and proofs offered to the apostles that well might they fear ever letting a hasty prayer escape their lips.

Our relationship with prayer these days is more complex - if nothing else by the way that we have so many sayings like the one, "God answers every prayer - either 'yes', 'no', or 'not yet.'"  We have had to make peace with the unanswered prayer.

And I wonder, is it in part because our hearts are not so pure as James tells us to be?  Can we not be trusted as these men who had had their lives so thoroughly changed could be to pray wisely and well?  Is this part of believing and not seeing?

I have personally come to think of prayer not as something that can change the world in the way that James talks about.  Prayer is something for ourselves and our personal relationship with God.  I don't think God decides who lives and dies or what course destiny takes because of the number of entreaties that wing their way up to heaven or the sincerity of them.  I don't think that prayer for our petitions is therefore useless.  And I wonder if James's warning is just as apt.

If our prayers are about nurturing our relationship to God, it is all the more important that we make sure we pray wisely and well, that we do not pray for harm but for good, that we are not afraid to air everything in our lives and led God help us sort through it.  That we should not forget that prayer is powerful, that it changes who we are, and that we should take full advantage of it.