I was recently writing to someone on the topic of prayer, and I thought it might make good blog material. Like, maybe three or four posts worth. (I guess I can be a bit verbose!). Anyway, here's the first installment:
It's impossible for me to discuss prayer except in the context of my relationship with God, just like I couldn't discuss communication with my wife outside of the context of the rest of our relationship.
Let's bear in mind that our relationship with God is, first and foremost, just that. A relationship usually isn't primarily about giving things to one another, it's about giving ourselves to one another in some way. We don't give ourselves in any two relationships in precisely the same way, but all of them (well, all healthy ones, anyway) provide an opportunity to receive from God in them and give ourselves in return back to God through them.
There are a couple of seemingly paradoxical things about this idea of giving ourselves in any relationship. One is that really giving ourself to another doesn't reduce us, but increases our capacity to love. (So many pertinent ways to go with this one thought!)
- As we give ourself to our spouse, we become more ready to give ourself to him or her in the future
- It is likewise as we and our spouse reach beyond our relationship to jointly give ourselves to others. A particular and wonderful manifestation of this is in giving of ourselves to the new lives we may be blessed to participate in creating
- As we give ourself to our spouse (and our spouse receives us), he or she becomes more able to receive love
- As we and our partner jointly give ourselves to others, those others become more able to receive love. Again, we see this most profoundly in the children we raise. Hopefully, they move from being utter takers, giving us only the joy of knowing we've given to them and the hope of their blank future, to eventually growing into adults who give of themselves in marvelous ways we could never envision
- This receiving and giving of love - and truly we must have received to ever have anything to give - expands our ability to receive and give love
Each of these two basic aspects of giving ourselves in love is a parable of God's love (and like all parables, has its limits; for one thing, God has no need to become more loving).
- As God gives himself (the more PC form of that would be God's self, as God is ultimately either not masculine nor feminine or else fully encompasses all aspects of both genders, but let's not go there; I use a pronoun for the sake of simpler writing and to keep God more accessible to my brain, and use the male one chiefly out of familiarity) to us, and we receive him, we become more capable of receiving love
- When we truly receive God's love, we desire to share it with others, be it our family, our dear friends, or those who have some need that we see are particularly equipped to meet and through which we ultimately give of ourselves to do so
- As we receive God's love into our lives and love God in return, it expands our ability to receive and give love to and from God and others
Now, what happens when, perhaps out of fear or self-judgment of some sort, we are unable to receive or accept love, from God or others? Then we have nothing to give. Our lives become a self-fulfilling prophecy of fear and failure. If I can't receive a blessing from God - directly or through others - either because I'm afraid to trust or because I ultimately don't believe I deserve it, then what I'm really blocking off is my ability to receive the relationship with God or the other person. (We are working our way back toward prayer, honest!)
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