How Shall We Pray?
There are many calls for peace right now. Of course, everyone wants peace. There are plenty of times in scripture when prayers for peace are actually scoffed at by God. We shared Jeremiah 6 in worship, but we can also sight Micah 6 and Isaiah 1. Twice in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus chastizes the lawkeepers around him for being harsh: “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,” which is itself a reference to the prophet Hosea. Often in the prophets, God scoffs at the idea of sacrifices since they are offered without justice and without repentance. I fear that we are in a time worthy of a similar rebuke from God.
So instead of mindless prayers of peace, here are a few other prayers worthy of the season we’re in:
The prayer of confession. If everything is interconnected, then we’re implicated in acts of war, even thousands of miles away from the target. Let us confess our implication. That could be anything from acknowledging the taxes paid for bombs and bombers, to any other entanglement. Confession is about shining the harsh light of truth on any given matter. It’s harsh because it doesn’t feel good. But truth is the first step to freedom from our many sins.
The prayer of penance. This is the prayer that has no words. It is the prayer prayed with action to correct wrongdoing. Penance is about doing something to make a wrong situation better. If the offense is negligence of a suffering neighbor, then penance is a healing gesture toward the one who is suffering.
The prayer of grief. This is about feeling the weight and sorrow of a situation. How can we pray for healing in the world without acknowledging its suffering? Too often we pray for healing without truly acknowledging the pain. The prayer of grief is about sitting in the dirt with the sufferer feeling their loss.
The prayer of silence. So often we pray with heaps of empty words. Then we spend little time listening for God’s reply. Often we pray to control a matter. The prayer of silence is a deliberate choice to leave the words to God as well as the control of a situation. We pray in silence to train our ears to God’s voice.
This season, let us pray more deliberately for God’s broken world. These approaches to prayer can help us connect better to God and become more loving in our world.
-Pastor Christopher
June 23, 2025