(Part 3 of the Soul’s DNA series)
Part 1 of this series provided a manifesto for Christian living – an attempt to summarize our uniquely Christian calling in this world. It’s a North Star we can use to (re)orient our lives. It’s a memo to ourselves.
Part 2 provided the Bible’s basic “source code” on which our calling draws its legitimacy and its power.
Taken together, these posts suggest that a big part of why we are here is to inject life into our muddled world. We have a “Divine permission” (some would call it a mandate) to disrupt the status quo of darkness. To be ambassadors and agents for light. To create Christ-centered options and alternatives to the world as we find it.
This post is about how we access, spark and animate our call to impact our world. It’s about how we get the light. I call it “The Singularity.”
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God, in His good judgement, has thrown open a channel of direct access to Himself. He is our “source code.” It’s a channel called prayer. As we access God through prayer, we access His nature, His wisdom, His love for us, His love for His creation, etc. We begin to catch a glimpse of the way God sees things. And we become aware of how off-kilter our world has become.
But, for us, prayer can sometimes be a tricky business.
We wrestle – at least I wrestle – with things like God’s silence in prayer, how we’re to pray, praying to saints, using formula prayers like the Lord’s Prayer, praying for miracles, praying for recovery from illness, engaging in intercessory prayer, dealing with unanswered prayer, etc.
CS Lewis wrote a book called Letters From Malcolm: Chiefly On Prayer. It deals honestly with these experiences in our prayer lives. For me, this little book sits atop my desk always and has become a favorite resource.
It’s a favorite because it’s helped me achieve a core understanding of prayer. What I’ve found is that prayer is a match that sparks a fuse. Over time, engaging in prayer begins to align our motives with God’s. It makes us more Christ-like. It starts to trigger our soul’s DNA in some way.
Often, prayer can set in motion a discontent with the world around us. It prompts US to “be” salt and light. It asks us to engage with the world as we find it. It asks us to walk into culture unafraid and begin the quiet work of transforming some little corner of it. Or maybe a big corner. Almost unknowingly (at the start anyway), we start to become agents for things like restoration or redemption. And other big theological words.
Here are four excerpts from Lewis’ book that have reframed my understanding prayer – especially as it relates to my role in responding to it.
Thy will be done – and most of it is to be done by His creatures.
In other words, when we pray “Thy will be done”, there’s a pretty good chance I will be moved to be the one doing “Thy will” in some way, shape or form.
Creation seems to be a delegation through and through. He will do nothing simply through Himself which can be done by His creatures. He will not – simply through the fiat of omnipotence – achieve instantaneous perfection.
In other words, He is not routinely in the business of “just fixing things.” He can, but opts not to. Instead, he normally engages us to carry out His work on earth (although He may drop in with the occasional miracle).
One of the purposes for which God instituted prayer may have been to bear witness that the course of events is not governed like a state but created like a work of art to which every being makes it contribution – a conscious contribution.
In other words, God engages “the body of Christ” to be the arms, feet, lungs and vision for carrying out His redemptive work in our world. Creation is lived out in time and space on a living canvas. We’re meant to stand at the easel and participate in the painting.
And finally – this little nugget…
Prayer is the point where the mystery of creation – timeless for God and incessant in time for us – is actually taking place.
Physics and mathematics have this word: singularity. By one definition, the singularity is the point at which a function takes an infinite value, especially when matter is infinitely dense, as in the center of a black hole.
To me, that’s how I’ve come to understand what prayer is. It’s a function God invites me to initiate. When I do, it transcends my motives and desires to take on an infinite value – a value ascribed by God and (maybe) unknown to me. And it often seems to happen in the “black hole” of culture and a world that seems to have gone awry. And finally, our prayer returns to us as agency. God inspires us to act. Maybe it’s in a small change of attitude. Or maybe you get called to launch a movement. In some way, we’re creating a new normal.
It’s not us engaging in ex nihilo creation (creating something out of nothing). It’s God molding us in time and space from our own stuff and repurposing it for the benefit of His Kingdom.
In sum: Prayer is the place where our creative role in this world is sparked and infused with meaning. Prayer is the singularity.
In Part 4 of this series, I’ll jot down some thoughts on how this understanding of prayer is currently playing out in my life.