The best line I’ve ever heard about prayer comes from a musician named Andy Squyres. In a book he wrote titled Poet Priest Vol.I he has a two-page photograph of someone playing pool. Over the hands is written this this remarkable sentence:
Prayer doesn’t work. Until it does.
I know, I know. It sounds kind of… flat? Over-obvious? Maybe a bit obtuse?
If you’re someone who believes in prayer, then you might – as I also do – have the curious experience of prayer being sometimes something that seems to “work” and other times doesn’t. The moments in your life where your prayers seemed to be answered are magnificent, and the times when prayer seemed to fail can be downright soul-crushing. Why prayer is a sometimes-thing is, I must admit, a bit beyond me.
But the deepest and oddest thing about prayer is that, the longer I try to live a life in which prayer is a significant feature the less my prayers seem to depend on whether they “work.” They become, over time, much less a form of request. They grow closer to something between an act of love and an intimacy with God.
In the middle of his letter to his friends in Thessalonica, Paul spontaneously breaks out into prayer. “Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.”
Look at what Paul is really asking for there – it’s big stuff. He hopes that he might visit them again. He asks that they would be full of love for one another. He prays a prayer that could only possibly, conceivably, and actually be fulfilled on the very last day of history: that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.
What Paul says in this prayer is not the kind of stuff, it seems to me, that one day he might wake up and discover had “come true.” The kinds of things he asks of God on behalf of his friends are so wide, so deep, so important that they take a lifetime to become real. He essentially is just holding them up to God with a heart full of genuine love on their behalf.
To be honest, this is the way I find myself praying for Christ School more and more over time. I doubt I am the only one. To be sure, there are things we need. There’s a 125th Anniversary that we hope to find full of joy. There’s an Asheville School game that is yet to be won. There’s a campus that requires further restorative work. To be sure, there is a future that will require all of our significant involvement, engagement, and generosity.
But more than any of that, there’s the kind of stuff Paul asks for. I pray that every Greenie would grow into a man of true depth, of infectious joy, of gentle strength. I pray that our school would stand for something good in a world fraught with grief. I pray that our community would exude a mutual love and generosity that would make any prospective family turn their heads in curious jealousy. I pray that we would be, ultimately, more than a place where classes are taught, games are won, and services are faithfully completed.
I pray that we would be part of what the Living God is doing in this creation, so deeply in need. Until tomorrow, H.