Sue Agnew

Dear friends,

Years ago a hairdresser told me, during her mother’s terminal illness, that she didn’t understand why people said “I will pray for her.” She protested “she is going to die and prayer isn’t going to change that.”

Feeling underqualified for the conversation, I answered as best I could that I think of prayer as asking for tools rather than for outcome. In my stumbling attempts at prayer, I might pray for courage, for patience, for resilience, for understanding. For discernment about what I need to do. For ways to approach a troubling situation. In prayers for a specific person I might simply say “be with.” Prayer approached in that way seems much more practical and answerable.

At about that same time, my reading group’s book included a mother whose son had been killed in Vietnam despite her prayers for his safety. Only one person besides me was a churchgoer, and we felt unable to answer the others’ questions about prayer. We started a group chat with other friends of each of us to discuss prayer, how to pray, and the meaning of answered prayer. It also became a group to ask for prayers. However, I began noticing that some prayer requests read more like itemized lists for God. “My nephew missed his flight, please pray that he can get another ticket … and that it’s refundable.”  

Hagiographer James Kiefer, in his biography of Florence Nightingale for her feast day August 12, tells of her having had high expectations of God and great disappointment when she felt he wasn’t responding appropriately. Eventually she wrote in her diary that God had spoken to her and said “You are here to carry out my program. I am not here to carry out yours.” She added “I must remember that God is not my private secretary.”

Yet, in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus said to his disciples “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Luke 11: 9–10) 

If this is meant literally, as many believe, I can’t explain how it can be. Unless “ask,” “search,” and “knock” refer to a nonspecific plea such as “help me.”

Yours in Christ,

—Sue