You examine me and know me

Is there ever a time when God works with haste for those who call on Him? Or is every call for rescue merely born of impatience?

— David Dickens, Nothing Hypothetical

The thought quoted above was left as a comment on Fr Stephen's blog, at the post entitled The Slow Work of Grace. Though David left another comment in which he elucidated and developed his thought, his original, pithy comment speaks mountains to me, mountains I've been climbing for years, to this very day. I promised myself that today, on my day off, I would clean house. Maybe that's what I'm doing, though in a different way.

For years I've been haunted by the saying of Jesus, "your Father knows what you need before you ask Him" (Matthew 6:8).

If that is so, why pray at all? The answer I read once in a children's book, The Magician's Nephew, where it is written, "… I’ve a sort of idea he likes to be asked."

So I straddle the wall between fervent entreaty and simply thanking the Lord for His care, providence and blessing over myself, my family members and my friends. Praying for people and causes that I am not personally involved with takes more the former than the latter shape, but the shape of my prayer usually develops from Jesus' word, "your Father knows what you need before you ask Him," because I never feel that He is distant or remote.

I keep praying the words of psalm 139, "Yahweh, you examine me and know me, you know if I am standing or sitting, you read my thoughts from far away, whether I walk or lie down, you are watching, you know every detail of my conduct. The word is not even on my tongue, Yahweh, before You know all about it; close behind and close in front You fence me around, shielding me with Your hand…"

In the presence of a God like that, all my entreaties melt away into thanksgiving, and all my heart wants to do is say, "I am happy with whatever Your will is for me. Let it be done to me as You have decreed." Yet I still bring myself around to intercede for others, and sometimes even for myself.

I am also haunted by Mother Gavrilía Papayanni's saying something to the effect that we often show that we don't trust the Lord, because we think to tell Him what we want Him to do, instead of just letting His will be our will. Yet Jesus also says, "I tell you most solemnly, anything you ask for from My Father, He will grant in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in My name. Ask and you will receive, and so your joy will be complete" (John 16:23b-24).

Hence, there is always a tension in prayer, but it is only like the tenseness of a bowstring: if the bowstring were lax, the arrow could not fly to its mark.

I'm drawn back to David's enigmatic question. I know from experience that God's answer to prayer never comes too early or too late, that we can depend on Him to be absolutely faithful, and that, yes, though He does know what we pray for before we ask, He cannot answer unless we ring Him. There is so much to be grasped but our words fail us.

"Pray as if everything depended on God, and work as if everything depended on us," is another saying that has a true and a false understanding.

This, at least, I can pray…

Help us, Lord, to ask what You would have us ask, and at the time You wish, not that our will be done, but Yours, whose will is that all come to the knowledge of the Truth, by permitting Your grace to transform our lives. As for every other need, Lord, You know that we need them before we ask.