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| Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools: An Invitation to the Wonder and Mystery of Prayer |
By praying, "Yes, have Your way," we consent to the deep work of the Spirit within forming us into resilient people in a fragile world. + Tyler Staton, Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools
Along with Red Skies, Living Under Water, Run with the Horses, Being with God, and A Curious Faith, Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools by Tyler Staton ranks up there as one of my favorite reads of this year.
The first post based on one of my top books on prayer was entitled, "Here Is Honest, Messy Holy Ground: Pray As You Can." And now as we step into the beginning of the Christian year and my favorite season of Advent (i.e. meaning "a coming" or "arrival;" also the reason for the purple hue for the cover image above as it represents the royalty of Jesus coming as the King), this post will feature a new excerpt with an invitation to pray like Mary did when she heard Immanuel, God with us, was coming in Jesus, her child.
Praying with Mary: Invitation into Wonder, Mystery, Resilience
Mary is a young girl, almost certainly a teenager, when she is informed the wonderful, dangerous, and mysterious news that she, a virgin, is carrying a child.
Not only is God keeping his promises, Mary must have thought, but he's keeping them in my days. I won't read the stories of the Messiah in a scroll; I'll watch them with my own two eyes. It's good news, but this good news will be costly in light of the confusion and potential condemnation.
Mary asks the angel of the Lord of Heaven's Armies, "How can this be?" And the angel explains the power of God for this moment. As she listens to the angel's explanation, Mary responds:
"I am the Lord's servant. May your word to me be fulfilled" (Luke 1:38).
It's a stunning prayer of surrender and participation. Mary is joining in the action of God to fulfill his promises of Messiah through her prayer of surrender and participation.
When Mary prayed with staggering faith, "I am the Lord's servant. May your word to me be fulfilled," she was transforming her life into a participation in God's redemption. She was cooperating with God's activity in the world and within her. I want that too. I want what I see in Mary. I want to cooperate with God's redemptive work in this broken world.
There's a phrase in Psalm 112 I hardly go a week without pondering: "Surely the righteous will never be shaken; they will be remembered forever. They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord." No fear of bad news? Can you even imagine living with that sort of resilience?
With the angelic appearance she experienced, the life Mary had been piecing together, the future plan she had been anticipating, seemed to be demolished, shattered into countless tiny shards. And what's her response? "I am the Lord's servant. May your word to me be fulfilled." That's a resilience I don't have, but I want it.
Prayer is the means by which we open our inner world to the Spirit's work within us and say, "Yes, have your way," forming us into resilient people in a fragile world, with no fear of bad news.
Praying with Jesus: Invitation into Acceptance and Participation
On the opposite end of Luke's gospel from when the angel encounters Mary, when the story that began with Mary's middle voice prayer is drawing to a close, Jesus prayed nearly identical words:
"Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done" (Luke 22:42).
The life of God, which was received in prayer by Mary, is lived in prayer by Jesus. On the most anguish-ridden, defining night of his life, Jesus prays the words of his mother. He must have heard her pray it as a child, Creator steeped in the praying voice of his own creation. And I can't help but wonder if when faced with the mess of redemption in a fallen world, Jesus didn't think of his mom, finding resilience at the end of his life in the very place she had found it in the beginning.
Practice: "I Am the Lord's Servant. May Your Word to Me Be Fulfilled."
"I Am the Lord's Servant"
I am deeply comforted in remembering that I popped into a story where I'm not playing the lead. I'm an extra in the background of a single scene in a narrative that is grander, more complex, and more redemptive than I could fathom. This is a story about God. He is the lead, at the center of every scene. I am the Lord's servant. And that, as it turns out, is more than enough for me. Yet I am the Lord's servant. I belong to the King of kings and serve in the Kingdom that outlasts all the others. There is no voice, no force, no condemnation that can make me any less than his.
"May Your Word to Me Be Fulfilled"
To pray these words is to search the circumstances I am living in today (typically circumstances I'd like to make some adjustments to) for God's invitation. It is to say yes to God's formation within me, making me a gift of love to the world, an answer to my own most audacious prayers. It is also a yes to God's work through me, calling me to a particular role in his ongoing redemption right now, today.
Consent to the work of God is acceptance and participation. Acceptance that God is here and now in this moment, these circumstances, these relationships; participation in God's invitation when I recognize him here in the mess. Wherever you recognize his Spirit inviting you to act, say yes. Commit to go, to give, to forgive, to include, to slow down, to rest, to see, to hope, to believe, to serve, to speak, to listen, to wait, to love.
Ponder
God speaks through the Word made flesh, Jesus (John 1:14, Hebrews 1:1-3).
If Jesus were to say to you right now, "Come, follow Me," what would He ask you to trust Him with right now?
Is there anything keeping you from taking a next step faith in trusting Christ Jesus?
Pray
Inhale: Lord, I am Your servant.
Exhale: May Your Word to me be fulfilled.
The assumption of spirituality is that always God is doing something before I know it. So the task is not to get God to do something I think needs to be done, but to become aware of what God is doing so that I can respond to it and participate and take delight in it.
+ Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor
+ Adapted excerpts above from Chapter 7: The Middle Voice: Prayer as Participation
Here are links to other recent City Notes (CN) books:
A Time To Heal (Shalom); Red Skies; Story of God in a Sanitation Truck; The Artistry of What's Next; Seeds of Hope in the Rain & the Dark; The Church is the Most Corrupt Institution on Earth; Wrestling with God in Doubt; Taste Grace in World of Seculosity; I've Seen What Hope Can Do; Baptism as the Way of Life; The Cross and Peacemaking Presence; Pray As You Can; Knowing and Naming True Friends; Gifted Saintly Identity; Listening Closely & Paying Attention; Living and Loving Curiously with Wonder
With presence, peace, and many prayerful blessings,
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