Monday Morning Meditation #38: The Power of Prayer

back home, well, with a normal morning in front of me, I am able, after a week away, to return to my regular Monday Morning Meditation post. I don't skip the prayer when I am out of town, but making the post is sometimes not possible because of lack of access to the Internet in some cases when I travel.

This week I stopped in the very next chapter of I Chronicles although I had not expected to, given that Chronicles, on the surface, seems to be a listing of genealogy. Slipped in between the lines of genealogy, however, are some real gems, like last week's prayer of Jabez and this week's discussion of how the the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, which had 44,760 men ready for military service—able-bodied men who could handle shield and sword, who could use a bow, and who were trained for battle, waged war against the Hagrites, Jetur, Naphish and Nodab and won because God "answered their prayers because they trusted in him." I found that last comment interesting.

Reading: I Chronicles 5: 18-22

Meditation: Many times I have run into people, including those in my church, who pray because they think they should, it has become habit, prayer is expected of them, or they are following the lead of others. Maybe because I quietly and inconspicuously as possible slid into the church at a later time in life, I never picked up on the "could," "should", "ought", and "everyone is doing it" of prayer. I would not bother to pray if I thought that God was not listening, would not answer, or was untrustworthy. Clearly, based on this passage, trust is a key ingredient in our relationship with God and with our prayer life.

For me, trust is how I began my relationship with God. At the end of my two-week conversion period (yep, I was stubborn enough to fight it for two intensive weeks), I asked for two miracles if God truly wanted me to believe He exists. The prayer (which at the time I would not even have admitted was a prayer) went something like, "I will believe You exist if You find a job for the employee's wife for whom I have been searching unsuccessfully for a job for months while the family remains geographically separated for nearly four years now, and, while You are at it, if You will heal employee X, who has been out sick three days out of every five for the past six months because of a chronic back problem, I will start attending church." I don't know what I expected to happen. The overwhelming sense of God's 24/7 presence, in my mind, either had to be eliminated as a psychological aberration or I had to yield to that presence, admitting its very real existence, but I was not going to yield without a fight. On the one hand, I thought these people deserved divine help should there be a Divinity. On the other hand, I still had my doubts. (I was a strong doubter.) And perhaps there was a subconscious desire to test whether that presence I was feeling, that God I did not want to admit existed, was a kind God (should He exist, that is). It was an odd period of time in my life, one that I had little control over. God's response was near immediate. When I arrived at work, there was an email to me from the director of another division, saying that he had learned that we had someone on our applicant list whom he could use immediately: the wife for whom I had been trying so hard and so unsuccessfully to find a job. At that point, I realized that the presence (Presence) I was dealing with was not only kind but also very powerful. I re-thought my bargaining about attending church and made a promise: "I will start attending church immediately and trust You to heal the employee for whom I requested help." Obviously, yielding was the only way to go, given what I now understood. And I kept my promise. I have only missed two Masses in nearly four years, one because I was sick and one because I was in a highly Islamic land and could not find a Christian church. As for that sick employee, I really did trust God to heal him, and my trust was not misplaced. That employee worked for me for another eight months and never missed a day of work after that prayer. I see him occasionally even now although he is currently working in another division, and his health remains superb. Trust God? You bet!

That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I must retire to private prayer, to thank God for being so trustworthy that I can give anything over to him no matter how precious to me, to praise Him for all the miracles He continues to pump into my life, and to repent for those (fortunately, rare) times that I have taken a problem back after giving it to Him. Since I have no petitions this morning, God typically giving me help before I have a chance to ask, I will spend as much time as I can in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves. (I may have a petition tomorrow morning as Noelle undergoes surgery, but God has watched over her for 33 years and pulled her safely through nearly 40 surgeries, the first 29 years without my asking. I trust Him to take care of her this time, too.)

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:
Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.