Faith Matters 30: For The Gardner News February 17, 2007
“What Shall We Pray For?”
One night in June thirty seven years ago, I received a phone call that brought my life to a standstill. My friend Joe had been in a tragic automobile accident. This saintly man in his early twenties, with wisdom beyond his year and a heart open to embrace any and all who came his way, had been a mentor in my work with homeless men and women. He was deeply spiritual, a man of irreverent yet profoundly committed Christian faith. The speaker at the other end of the line told me that Joe was driving to visit his family in Connecticut when a drunken driver crossed the center line and hit Joe head-on. He was now in a coma, unresponsive. Fighting back his tears, the caller told me Joe had suffered serious brain damage. If he lived, he would likely remain in a coma and be profoundly disabled.
Hanging up the phone, I did something I had resisted doing for years and years--I prayed. I wasn’t sure who or what I was praying to; I didn’t know what I believed anymore. And even more important to me at the time, I didn’t know what to pray for. Should I pray for Joe to live, knowing that he would probably never regain consciousness? Or should I pray that he might die peacefully?
From somewhere in my past, the only prayer I knew, the Lord’s Prayer, rose up inside of me: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven … Over and over I silently prayed the Lord’s Prayer, not knowing what I was really praying for, but desperately asking God, whoever or whatever he was, to help Joe, whatever that meant. For nine days I silently prayed, over and over. Another phone call, nine days later told me that Joe had finally died.
I have never felt such a profound sense of God’s presence as on that day. Whenever I hear the words “the peace that passes understanding” I think of that time and the peace that washed over me and around me and within me. I can’t explain it, but I know that in ways I couldn’t understand, that prayer and its answer had changed my life forever.
Now, as I sit by bedsides with men and women struggling with illness or wracked with cancer, struggling to breathe, I have learned to ask them, “what shall we pray for?” Sometimes they ask for release from their suffering and I pray aloud accordingly. Sometimes they are still hoping for healing, and I try to put into words the prayers I hear in their hearts.
But when they aren’t able to communicate to me their desire, whether for life and healing or for release, I have come to trust that the God who created us, who loves us, and wishes only good for us, also has a prayer for each of us, whether I or we know what that might be or not. And in these times of not-knowing, I pray that in whatever way I can, I might honor and support what God’s prayer for that person might be. Whether they will ultimately live or die is in God’s loving hands.
As I pray for enemies and strangers, and even those close to me, I try to remember that more important than what I want for that person is what God wants. Trusting in the profound goodness of God, I pray that they might hear and respond to God’s prayer for them, whatever that might be. My prayer for myself in these times of unknowing is that God might use me to honor and support whatever prayer God is praying within them and for them. This prayer continues to bring me peace, even in the face of the ultimate dilemma of what to pray for.