A Six-Year-Old's Deep Theological Questions

My oldest daughter has been in a phase lately where incidents in everyday life prompt her to ask questions about God and faith which, for a six-year-old, strike me as very deep indeed. As we were getting ready for church this morning, she again asked me about prayer - except this time, it was for herself, since she has been ill for the past two days.

MB: "Daddy, is it okay to pray for myself to get better?"

Me: "Sure it is. People pray for themselves all the time."

MB: "So it's okay to ask Miss C. [the children's priest at our church] to pray for me when she asks today?"

Me: "Sure."

MB: "What do people pray for?"

Me: "Well, they pray to get better if they've been sick, or they pray for a job if they don't have one, or they pray for a good friend or a member of their family. They pray for anything."

MB: "Did you pray to God when you went to Applebees and got sick [with food poisoning]?"

Me: [holding back laughter] "Oh, yes, I sure did."

This episode is a lesson on two fronts - one, children always ask great questions, and two, they never forget anything. Applebees was four years ago!!

What Does Prayer Mean to You?

My blog friend Julie, who as I've mentioned in the past writes a religion and spirituality column for UPI, published a very good one this week (as they always are) on prayer. It's entitled "Prayer is a Waste of Time," but as she warns her readers, be sure to actually read the entire column before jumping to conclusions based on the title alone.

After I read it, I posted the following comment on her blog -- and I'd be interested in your comments after you've read the column.

Prayer for me has evolved over the course of my life, from the praying every night for my family and friends as a child to the selfish prayers of high school (God, let me pass tomorrow's big test; God, let so-and-so say she'll go out with me), then through a phase where I didn't pray at all, to the current phase in my life where prayer to me is more of a conversation with God. For me, as you alluded in your column, many of the prayers that we say tend to lose meaning after a while because we do them from memory as a part of Sunday services or evening family time.

Not that the answer to my prayers is going to be any different, but I take my prayers to God (when I do pray) as someone who would take a request or a plea for help to a friend or family member. I see God more as someone wanting to be the friend who wants to hear you and help you rather than the friend you're bowing down to. Not the most traditional view, I'm sure, but then again my traditional views have changed as I've gotten older.

The Answering of Prayers

While reading through postings on other blogs I enjoy visiting, I ran across one that included the following passage about prayer: "I am tired of the response God answers "yes, no, maybe". I think that is just rationalization to make ourselves feel better...to keep believing that God is answering our prayers. God has not made himself/herself knowable by answering prayers, imo. When was the last time you moved mountains?"

I thought about the passage for several days before posting a response. To me, the answering of prayers isn't something that is a firm yes/no/maybe that we can see. In fact, I think that many times prayers are answered at a time and in a way that we're either not expecting or not even looking for. Looking back, they might not necessarily have been answered the way that we would have liked. As St. Teresa of Avila once wrote, "There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers." Lots of folks wonder why the prayers that are asking to move mountains aren't answered with an equally-monumental response -- maybe they are; perhaps, though, the mountain is not being moved all at once, but one pebble or one clump of soil at a time.

And my method of prayer? For me, it is often a conversation during a quiet moment where I "talk out" my problems and offer them up for a solution, rather than a structured, bended-knee type exercise. God as a friend you can ring up whenever you want, rather than God as an Oz-type character where you enter the Emerald Palace and beg for an audience and hope he will give you a few minutes to plead your case.

Looking at the cumulative results of prayer I think are similar to the advice given to a writer once who was looking to write the one big story of his life. He was told that, rather than looking for the one big story, write the little stories along the way -- at the end, you'll find that the little stories make up the big story. Same with prayer -- the big answer you're looking for may be the result of several small answers you get along the way.

I am curious as to what others think about the answering of prayers. Do you see your prayers being answered by what you can see or hear as tangible results, or in the many ways that you don't see or hear the results? And how do you approach prayer?