Thinking While Praying

As I begin to pray at times for concerns about those I love and people I know, I also think as I pray. I think things like: "While I am praying this, there are mothers praying as their children die of starvation and injuries. While I am praying for this or that, there are little children who are being raped and who are praying to God for help and it doesn't come. While I am praying, etc., etc., etc."

And, I begin to ask and think more than pray sometimes, wondering before God about how in the world God can deal with all of what is going on in the world, and wondering how God is really involved. I apologized to God in my prayer last night saying something like: "I wouldn't expect you to hear concerns like these when you have so many greater cries for help and need in this world." And, then it seemed to me that I was heard, heard because I realized where I stood in this world, heard because I began to feel the burden of God in this world.

And, I also was thinking as I often think that God does not always seem able to bring relief and help. That sounds blasphemous to some, but I think God is real and is really involved in the history of humanity and that means that God does not manipulate happenings like someone manipulating puppets on strings. If God was really able to save every little child who is being raped and beaten right now, I think God would save them from it. I do not believe God stands "at a distance,", nor do I believe that somehow the raping of little children is part of God's mysterious plan. No, it is part of a creation in rebellion against God's goodness, God's mercy and God's love.

Sometimes I think the Lord of the Rings is one of the best representation of how things really are in this world. There is a real struggle between good and evil, and good has an integrity and a persistence that makes life worth living. But, good doesn't always win out in this world. One day, I believe, it will, as it says in Rev. 21:1-4, but until then, we are part of a struggle.

Jesus prayed: "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done - on earth as it is in heaven." Doesn't that show that God's will often is not done on earth?! Otherwise, why would Jesus have prayed that way?

Also, in the Gospels we are told that Jesus couldn't perform any miracles in his hometown because they had no faith. God does seem to have chosen to need human cooperation in this world. In creating, God seems to have given himself to a certain extent to the creation, so that God is affected even as God affects the creatures he has made.

Just some things I have been thinking while I am praying.

As I was thinking these things last night, right at the end of my praying, everything became very, very simple, so that I quit thinking and prayed a very simple prayer that had no words, a prayer so simple it gave me a sense of peace and I fell asleep.