When we knock and get knocked down

We have prayed the following prayers. Let the child with cancer live. Let the altruistic saint who lives down the street continue her non-profit ministry unscathed. Let the war-torn nation (or neighborhood) live in peace.

It is far beyond painful when these prayers don’t actualize. Since you began reading this column a moment ago, here is a painful truth: somewhere in the world a child with cancer is losing his or her life, or has just died. Another community-based organization plummets. Wars of all kinds continue.

Is prayer a waste of time? Is God distant, or approachable?

With heartfelt anguish, deep upset, or a cold anger, we can wonder, “Does prayer even do anything?”

In Luke 11:1-13, lectionary text this past Sunday, one of Jesus’ disciples notices his leader and teacher who has just finished praying privately, quietly, and at some distance. The NLT version says that Jesus was “in a certain place” praying (verse 1a).

This disciple, like all of us, has seen evil in the world. He knows of a child who has died. He has seen a charitable organization collapse. He has lived through wars within his own family, or experienced battles of some other kind. Scripture doesn’t speak to this, but maybe this disciple, like some of us, wonders if prayer does anything.

Yet there is Jesus. In that certain place, he’s praying. This is not the first time this leader who has upset religious elite settles off somewhere to pray. In all four gospels, we piece together how necessary it is for Jesus to pray.

Pause with me in this phrase of text in Luke 11. Think about that certain place in the disciple’s heart—and in yours—as you imagine Jesus praying. Something happens here. In this mess of a thing called life, there is the Son of God in prayer. Whatever pulls the disciple closer to Jesus at this point can pull at us, too. He doesn’t ask Jesus why he prays. He asks Jesus how he prays.

I hear him holding a genuine desire to understand prayer when he walks up to Jesus. He doesn’t ask Jesus a question. He approaches with a statement. “Teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples (verse 1b).”

Let me speak to this word disciples for a moment. First century disciples are considered students. Yet even more accurately for us to understand, these disciples are on-the-ground mentors in training. While John the baptizer certainly had a unique personality (he ate locusts and wild honey) and he had a distinct location (he was off in the wild countryside), he was a teacher like his cousin, Jesus. He had disciples.

Disciples within the Jewish tradition learn a great deal about prayer. It is a natural exchange for Jesus to answer his disciple. In his answer, he gives all his disciples words to pray. These words become known as the Lord’s Prayer.

Jesus goes beyond giving his students the Lord’s Prayer. To help his disciples learn even more about prayer, Jesus continues. He shares a story about the persistence of prayer. In this story, Jesus offers this summary. “And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened (verses 9-10).”

Keep asking? Keep seeking? Keep knocking?

All of us—including the disciple who asked about prayer—has knocked and has been knocked down by life’s hardships. Why should we knock again? Hello pain. Hello suffering. Remember the kid with cancer, the lady at the mission, and, oh, yes, we have the war-torn nation of Ukraine. Why should we keep praying persistently?

We pray persistently through all kinds of hard knocks and deep blows with this result. We change. The circumstances around the prayer we prayed may remain dour. Death stings. Loss strikes. Evil exists. But we change. In praying, we get to know God not only better, but also more deeply. Does this help the child who died? How about her parents? Does this change make a difference to the friend of an addict, or to the addict himself? And for those at war, does our deeper understanding of God actually help?

I will say yes. It may never be an ultimate, grand or significant change, but it only takes a little light to change darkness. If we get enough light—if enough Christians understand how important it was for Jesus to pray and that we can pray—then the world whose glass is half empty may still remain half empty, but it’s only a glass.

Light the world. Fill someone’s glass. This doesn’t eradicate pain, but we can use our pain—our hardest knocks—and do more than sit idly through the heartbreaks of the world. We can keep praying.

So, yes, keep praying. Keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep knocking, even (or especially) when you get knocked down. Prayer helps us understand that the knock can be a block you someday step up on so that you can see and light someone else’s darkness.

There are other glasses on the table.