The Patience of Prayer – Sunday, March 07, 1982
We live in an impatient world, a world in which the speed of our arrival seems to be valued even more highly than the importance of our destination. Fiber optics, bubble memory, communication satellites; even our communion with one another insists on speed. We telephone across the ocean nearly as easily as across town; we retrieve in milliseconds seemingly limitless information from our computers.
And yet, there are communications which defy our need for speed, messages which cannot be instantly commanded. The love a parent gives a child, which takes years to develop and a lifetime to prove; the gestures of friendship which cannot be spoken in a moment, cannot be communicated in a word.
And prayer; In Jeremiah, the Lord says: “Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.”1
We cannot express our “hearts” in a moment, nor quickly make them prayerful. Like the other communications of love and need, prayer requires persistence and consistence, a constant, willing, turning of our souls to God.
Not that God needs to be reminded by our repetitions, but we do.
We need quite literally to insist ourselves upon his love. Like the importunate widow of Christ’s parable, who won her case before even an unworthy judge. We need to insist ourselves upon the merciful caring of the great judge of all. Because only if we insist, to ourselves as much as to him, only if we persist will we develop that relationship of love upon which the communication of prayer depends.
God will respond, but his response depends upon our ability to receive.
For that reason, the impatience that a busy, hurried world inspires works against the inspirations of prayer. If we are to seek God, and find Him, we must find time for prayer, and the patience for our prayers to be answered.
1 Jeremiah 29.12,13
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March 07, 1982
Broadcast Number 2,742