Prayer requests.
They always seem to draw an endless stream of illnesses–ours, our family’s, our relatives’, our pets’, our friends’, our friends’ neighbors’ and then often, you even get requests for people even more obscure. We take these lists and we pass them as broadly as we can.
We used to send these things out via church prayer chains–this person calls that one and that one calls that one until everyone knows everything and everyone is praying. With the internet, we can pass the scoop on with a few keystrokes. Then we get creative. Facebook pages get 1,000,000 prayers for a little girl with cancer. Chain emails win God over with 1,000,000 forwards about a woman in a car accident.
We feel very spiritual passing out prayer requests.
My daughter broke her arm. Should we have people pray about her arm? Should we give it a Facebook page? Should we send out emails? Should we warm up the phone lines?
There is something good about praying for broken bones. We all pray and God heals. We give God the glory for a whole arm. We count it as a prayer answered because the bone healed. Faith is bolstered.
But bones heal when they are set and put in a cast. Prayer or no prayer, God causes the bones of the righteous and the wicked to heal.
But we like to pray for broken bones. They heal.
Even cancer. Even something terminal. We still like to pray about it. We can do a scan and see progress. We can report a new treatment. Doctors document the progress or the further need of prayer. It is all very clinical. We give God praise for progress. We remember His faithfulness even in death.
It emails well.
You know what doesn’t email well? Broken hearts.
Broken hearts have no metrics to know if they are mending. There are no tests to say they are improving. There are no doctors to declare them healed.
Broken hearts have a privacy that broken bones do not. There is no shame and no real need for privacy when it comes to broken bones. Broken bones are the result of specific, physical forces. Broken bones heal when you put them back together and give them a bit of time.
Broken hearts have causes which are not nearly as clean and neat. They come from violence, tragedy, fear, shame, and a host of other reasons which are equally unseemly. Broken hearts heal with the gentle care of a few trusted friends, but they are exacerbated by being shared indiscriminately.
Broken hearts don’t need a million emails, or their own Facebook page, broken hearts need real friends who take the time to care.
When churches insist on focusing their energy on broken bones, broken hearts are subverted, ignored and hidden. Broken bones that are not set right might make you limp. Broken hearts can kill you.
Sometimes it is easier to care about a broken bone because we know ultimately it requires little from us… Perhaps a meal or trip to the doctor. A broken heart can commit our time and effort for a long time.
Okay, I love this post….but it made me cry. I think simply of the number of broken hearts I have seen and the broken heart I have myself sometimes. I am blessed to be real friends with the Shepherd and his wife. They have made healing a real possibility, for me, for S and our daughters and son. A light of HOPE, a gift of real emotion, raw emotion, and a safe haven for wrestling through the unseemly. A very big difference to the previous two years of our life, really the first 18 years of our lives as part of the church. Brian McLaren says in his book The Story We Find Ourselves In, that Abraham and God’s people were blessed to be a blessing, chosen to share the blessing of the one true God. I am honored to know the Shepherd and W…they are blessed to be a blessing. They live to honor the love, grace and hope that is our God and Father, our Savior and King.
Thanks Shepherd
It’s relatively easier to pray for the physical (Lord, please buy me a Mercedes-Benz !) We either get what we prayed for or we can justify why it didn’t happen (my prayer-partner just lacks real faith). Praying for the immaterial or the unseen is a different proposition. We may never know the result of such prayer. We will not necessarily get instant (or at least prompt) feedback. We may not recognize the answer when it comes. When dealing with the unseen or the unmeasureable we are at the mercy of FAITH.
Many believers steer clear of praying for the unseen because they have fallen into the trap of placing trust in their faith instead of Gods faithfulness. Since such folks know, or believe, little about the character of the Father. They must rely on their own strength (or knowledge or formulas, or whatever.) and that requires feedback, preferably instant feedback, to reinforce the “rightness” of their position.
God help us when we forget to pray,”I believe, help Thou my unbelief.” God help us when we neglect to sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness” and don’t strive to believe it! God help us when we forget that the Glory that comes with believing prayer is His and not ours. God help us.
Good one, Shepherd! While our Lord Jesus certainly did heal alot of physical illness while he was here (so we know our bodies matter to him), what the Bible talks the most about is the state of our broken hearts! Our hearts are where God comes and makes his home. Jesus says in John 14 that the whole Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, lovingly come and make their home in us. We can pray with confidence for hurting hearts. Our God is a god who always is merciful and close to the broken-hearted (even if we/they are in too much pain or too numb to ‘feel’ him). He cares and is not helpless.