The Epic Story

We have come now to the official final chapter. What proceeds this chapter is an epilog. It has been seven rich chapters of reminders of God's care and control in our circumstances both global and local. I am reminded of a God who cares for us and who delights in our prayers and having a deep relationship with us. I've been reminded that prayer is not about us, but it is about God, His Kingdom, His glory, and His will being accomplished. I am a part of His story, not the center of it.

The opening quote is:

It is not that our prayers are not answered, it is that we do not accept the answer.

Kosti Tolonen

I think that this is true. God answers one way and often we do not accept the answer. Usually this is when God answers in a way I did not want to happen. There is that tension between how God answers and how we want things to go. Sittser opens with the incident where nine miners were trapped underground about ten years ago.

"I try to put myself in the place of those miners. Those eighteen hours of silence must have been almost unbearable, like waiting for one's execution. The drilling had stopped; it seemed the rescue workers had quit. The miners felt utterly alone, forsaken, abandoned. It was only a matter of time before they would perish. Eighteen hours of agony and uncertainty and terror, 240 feet below ground, in a place that must have seemed like hell to them.

And all they could do was wait, hour after hour, for help to arrive, if there was ever going to be any help. Yet those nine men never stopped believing, however bad the odds were. They prepared themselves for the worst--death. But they hoped and prayed for the best--deliverance.

Eighteen hours is not a long period of time, unless of course you are trapped 240 feet below ground, expecting to die at any moment from drowning or hypothermia or asphyxiation. During such a traumatic experience time becomes relative. I'm sure it felt like eighteen days, or even longer.

This is true for all of us at some point in our lives. The lapse of time between promise and fulfillment, between prayers uttered and prayers answered can seem interminable, far too long to maintain hope and to persist in prayer. But sometimes that is exactly what we must do--keep hoping and praying, for eighteen hours or eighteen days or eighteen years, even when there doesn't seem to be one good reason to continue." (p. 173)

I think the parallel into our situations is powerful. That in between time where we are totally uncertain of deliverance or death. It can be praying for a loved one, a relationship, finances, or the revival of a church. We live often in that in between time where it is so easy to give up hope. We know that God is ultimately in control, but sometimes in the waiting period little bits of doubt become so real.

"It could be that there is no such thing as unanswered prayer.

What we interpret as "no" might really be "not in that way" or "not yet."

In other words, the waiting itself might be necessary, creative, and useful, like watching a forest gradually recover from a devastating fire until it becomes more beautiful than before." (p. 175)

God answers in ways that are so different than we expected. His timing is often far longer than we would want. Sittser makes the illustration of Garth Brook's song on Unanswered Prayer where he meets his high school sweetheart twenty years after graduation. She is not the woman he fell in loved with and Brooks had prayed so deeply that she would be his but God had other, far better plans for a wife. As I write this I had a dream last night about a college sweetheart nearly ten years ago. I grieved for many years the loss of that relationship but was reminded in last night's dream of how and why it never could have been. God our Father has far better plans for us. One powerful line in the song is that some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. That is, that God withholds what we ask for, only to provide something far better. "Instead of unanswered prayer, perhaps there are only answers to prayer that we don't want, can't foresee, and wouldn't ask for." (p. 179). Sittser reminds us that we need to pray with flexibility and openness to what God is saying. Sittser reminds us that keeping in mind God's redemptive story is useful in how we pray. He gives the example of the story of Ruth.

"The story of Ruth teaches us that when we pray, we must think big, as big as an epic, and use our imagination, keeping our eyes peeled for signs of the strange way God works to redeem the world.

Cotton Mather, Puritan pastor and spiritual writer, argued that we won't see the full impact of our prayers until we get to heaven. We pray by faith now, and often in ignorance. Only God knows how it all fits together.

When I arrive to the heavenly World, where I shall reap the rich Harvest of all my Devotions here, the Holy Spirit having all my Prayers in a most perfect Remembrance, will then heap in upon me the Answers of them with Blessings of Goodness, far beyond all that I can see or think. Oh! Let the strong Faith of his produce in me a very praying Life, and give Life to my Prayers, and make my sowing Time to be very diligent and plentiful.8" (p. 184)

Often, the answer to pray comes many years later and sometimes not even in our lifetime. Remember Bob from the first chapter who prayed for the mission team which included Jim Elliot?

"Years later Bob was attending an international conference, held in Europe, for evangelists from around the world. He bumped into an old friend on the elevator, who introduced Bob to an evangelist from South America. In the course of their conversation Bob learned that the evangelist was one of the Auca Indians who had murdered his friend, Jim Eliott, and the four others who were with him. Bob was dumbstruck by the experience, as if he were having an epiphany. His prayer had been mysteriously answered, though not in the way he asked, expected, or wanted. The Auca Indians had become Christians, at least in part because of the death of those five missionaries. The proof was standing right before Bob's eyes." (p. 185)

The awful tragedy of the murder of those missionaries turned to good. The murder of God's workers was not itself good. What was done was wrong and inexcusable. God turned the evil into redemptive good.

As I write this book, Jews and Palestinians continue to kill each other in the Middle East. Most Americans have wisely chosen to stay away from Israel, afraid of what could happen if a suicide bomber exploded a bomb right where they just happened to be. But not everyone reacts this way. Maria Bennett, a student at Hebrew University, chose to stay, in spite of the danger. She wrote an essay on her experience that appeared in the San Diego Jewish Press-Heritage on May 10, 2002.

Aware of the possibility of death, especially whenever she passed through a public place, Maria chose to remain in Israel because she wanted to be a part of the solution. "At least," she wrote, "if I am here I can take an active role in attempting to put back together all that has broken. I can volunteer in the homes of Israelis affected by terrorism. I can put food in collection baskets for Palestinian families." Though she agreed with the loved ones who urged her to leave, she decided nevertheless to stay. "It is dangerous here. I appreciate their concern. But there is nowhere else in the world I would rather be right now. I have a front-row seat for the history of the Jewish people. I am a part of the struggle for Israel's survival .... I know that this struggle is worth it."11 She died on July 31, 2002, when a Palestinian blew himself up in the middle of the university.

Prayer does more than put us in a front-row seat, as Bennett mentioned. It puts us on stage. We become a player in God's redemptive work because God will somehow use us to answer our own prayers.

There is thus no safety in prayer. Our prayers will thrust us into the action--into relationships, causes, institutions, conflicts, and needs--all of which will demand our time, our resources, even our lives. The answers we pray for will involve us, change us, and redirect the course of our lives. If we pray for peace, we will have to become peacemakers. If we pray for justice, we will be forced to uphold the cause of justice. If we pray for the salvation of the world, we will be given opportunities to share the good news. If we pray for someone's physical healing, we will have to become part of a community of support to get the friend back on his or her feet, or provide comfort if our prayers are not answered in exactly the way we had hoped.

Most of our prayers fall short because they are too cautious and conservative. We want problems to disappear but not necessarily be solved; we want symptoms to be treated while the disease continues to progress; we want conflicts to be smoothed over, though the underlying issues remain untouched. We long for convenience and security.

But God thinks bigger than that. He plans to redeem the world, and he will use us in the process. So that is how we must pray.

Those nine miners had to spend eighteen hours in that mine, thinking that the rescue operation had stopped, either because the rescue workers had failed or because they had given up. They had to contend with bad air, cold, wet, darkness, and despair. Amazingly, they continued to hope and pray. They had no idea what was happening above ground, which, as we know, was another story altogether, for the rescue workers were busy around the clock doing everything they could to get the miners out.

Their story is our story. Just so must we pray, with all the boldness and audacity we can muster, however long we have to wait for answers and however weary and broken we feel. For God will answer our prayers, perhaps not how we wanted or when we wanted but in a way that we truly longed for in the depths of our being.” (p. 191-193)

Prayer:

Father, my heart is set ablaze in the reminder that we must pray big. We must pray big with expectant faith and audacious hope. Father, I pray for the injustice to be made right and for the fatherless to be protected. I pray for this weekend’s revival and the spiritual awakening of a city. I pray for the recovery of our city’s addicts and terminally ill. Grant me, I pray the opportunity to be the change that You seek in this broken world. I want to play a role in Your story, whatever that looks like. We’ve come to this final chapter. We’ve been reminded in this process to never give up hope that You are working all things for good in Your timing. You turn evil to good even when we do not see it. Work out Your redemptive plan in this city, even today.