reckless prayer : awkward stillness
Seeking prayer as a conversation often raises expectations of a dynamic dialogue between us and God. Sometimes, though, the dynamic involves large amounts of stillness, and that’s something we’re not quite used to.
Especially when God asks us some rather awkward questions in that stillness.
In our exploration of reckless prayer, we enter the story of Elijah, who experienced such a stillness during a particular crisis in his life. We enter his story at 1 Kings 19 …
… Now Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me and even more, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.”
And he was afraid and arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree; and he requested for himself that he might die, and said, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take my life, for I am not better than my fathers.”
He lay down and slept under a juniper tree; and behold, there was an angel touching him, and he said to him, “Arise, eat.” Then he looked and behold, there was at his head a bread cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. So he ate and drank and lay down again.
The angel of the LORD came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise, eat, because the journey is too great for you.” So he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God.
Then he came there to a cave and lodged there; and behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and He said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
He said, “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the sons of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars and killed Your prophets with the sword And I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.”
So He said, “Go forth and stand on the mountain before the LORD” And behold, the LORD was passing by! And a great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of a gentle blowing.
When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave.
And behold, a voice came to him and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
And, indeed, what was Elijah to say? What would YOU say?
Elijah, it turns out, repeats what he said the first time. I have this image of him sitting in the cave, despondent at his loneliness, and not impressed by the wind, the earthquake, or the fire. The Lord told him to go and stand on the mountain, but Elijah doesn’t actually go to the entrance of the cave until he senses the presence of the Lord in the sound of the gentle blowing, a whisper, a breath.
Too often in our lives, especially in crises, we crave the Lord’s presence but we confuse His presence with the noise of a strong wind of activity, or a mighty unsettling earthquake in our lives, or a raging fire of emotions within or without. These things speak to our external senses and we gladly exchange our soul’s desire for a temporal fix.
Elijah, however, sought the deeper stillness even though it was an awkward stillness. Even though the question was an awkward one : what are you doing here?
The JPS Hebrew-English translation renders that question as : “Why are you here, Elijah?”
Perhaps he had a lot of time to reflect on that - prior to his showing up on that mountain, he leaves his servant behind and goes about a day’s walk before falling asleep under a broom bush, depressed and desperate to die. The answer to his prayer comes in the form of angel cake and then he sleeps again. The angel feeds him a second time and says the food is necessary for the journey he is about to take.
And then he goes on a solitary wilderness trek for “forty days and forty nights” on his way to the mountain.
Now, I don’t know whether those 40 days were metaphorical or literal, but either way Elijah took a long journey in silence and in solitude on his way to meet with God.
In my limited mind I imagine Elijah rehearsing the speech he is going to give, the many things on his heart that he is about to pour out when he finally does see God. I imagine Elijah working through his urge to die, figuring out what he is going to say to explain himself when God asks him.
So when he shows up on the mountain and God asks him, “why are you here, Elijah?”, I imagine that the answer Elijah gives him is the one that came out of 40 days of Elijah’s rumination.
It doesn’t really feel like an answer to the question, though - what WAS Elijah doing there?
Sometimes when we pray, God is absent not because He doesn’t care, but because we are trying to seek something that we’re not really sure of, and God wants us to wrestle deeper with the question of WHY we are praying.
What are we doing here?
Let me be clear - this is not asked in a big-picture “what is the purpose of your life” sense. Rather, it is in a sense of “you are in my throneroom - what are you doing here?”
And, bigger still, this is not asked in a general sense (”what are y’all doin’ here?”) but rather God addresses us by NAME: “why are you here, ELIJAH?”
Why are you here, Bob?
Frank? Jane? Dave? Anna? [insert your name here]?
In our reckless prayer gathering, as we looked at this story we did an exercise in seeking the stillness. We spent 10 minutes in silence, each of us with a piece of paper and a writing implement. And we imagined what we would say if we were on a similar 40-day trek in the wilderness, on our way to meet with God, knowing that he would ask us : “why are you here?”
It was discomforting to be in silence for that long. It was also discomforting to think of being asked that question. It put me in the position of being quiet in the presence of God.
I mean, sure, I had a surface level answer to that question that I jotted down really quickly - as I’m sure Elijah probably had too (”I’m here to die dammit!”) - but in the continued presence of God my silence deepened and I started to dig deeper.
- to seek the presence of God?
- why?
- to be validated?
- to pray? what for?
- identity?
Later, as we came back into discussion-mode, one of the insights people shared was just how rarely we got to spend as little as 10 minutes in silence, and how beneficial it was.
I believe God still speaks - but that sometimes instead of words He speaks in stillness. I’ve had experiences, especially during times of deep inner wrestling with particular struggles or crises, when I’ve desperately sought God, and I would go to church and I would feel uplifted by the amazing rock-concert-like church worship band, and I would try to pray during those powerfully constructed spiritual moments during the worship service, but I felt that God was not in the noise or the swirling emotions produced by the concert/service. Then I’ve tried to pray while being with a bunch of friends, but I felt that God was not in the camaraderie. Or, at least, His spirit was present but in community, not to answer my nagging need for a wrestle-time with God. Later, when I’m alone in my apartment is when I’ve felt the still small whisper, but the hanging question in the air was too discomforting for me and I would actively leave to go find something noisy to do to get away from the question.
To be in a reckless prayer relationship with God sometimes requires us to actively seek to be in His stillness, even if that stillness feels discomforting, awkward, and leaves us with questions that we find hard to answer.
Why are you here?
