The Park Forum

If you want to change the world, who do you begin with, yourself or others? I believe if we begin with ourselves and do the things that we need to do and become the best person we can be, we have a much better chance of changing the world for the better.

―Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Scripture: Psalm 71.4

Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man.

Reflection: Justice and Mercy
The Park Forum

“Gradually it was disclosed to me,” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn noted, reflecting on his time as a prisoner in The Gulag Archipelago “that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”

It is not that Solzhenitsyn wanted to ignore injustice—nor did he extend some sort of blind forgiveness for the atrocities of the Bolsheviks. “It is unthinkable in the twentieth century to fail to distinguish between what constitutes an abominable atrocity that must be prosecuted and what constitutes that ‘past’ which ‘ought not to be stirred up.’”

Yet even if it were prosecuted, Solzhenitsyn knew, eliminating evil involved far more than tamping down its expression in the modern world:

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

How similar we find the voice of the Psalms—crying out for God’s justice, pleading for God’s mercy. In Scripture we not only hear the psalmists cry out for God’s vengeance, but we see God exact his anger toward evil.

And yet, in a stunning response to our cry for mercy, God directs his anger toward himself. The wine of justice is pressed from the fruit of mercy. Anything less might satisfy our desire for retribution, but leave us longing for the hope and grace we need for this day.

Solzhenitsyn, like the Scriptures, charges us to move forward—to speak up—and to cry out for the justice our world needs:

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future.

When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.

Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons

Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

—Matthew 5.6

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Numbers 27 (Listen – 3:08)
Psalm 70-71 (Listen – 3:29)

It is certain that one can speak of one’s own innocence in a self-righteous manner, but do we not realize that one can also pray the most humble confession of sin very self-righteously?

―Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Scripture: Psalm 69.13

But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord. At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love answer me in your saving faithfulness.

Reflection: Guilt and Forgiveness
By Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

There are fewer prayers for the forgiveness of sins in the Psalter than we expect. Most psalms presuppose complete certainty of the forgiveness of sins. That may surprise us. But even in the New Testament the same thing is true. Christian prayer is diminished and endangered when it revolves exclusively around the forgiveness of sins. There is such a thing as confidently leaving sin behind for the sake of Jesus Christ.

Christians have something to say not only about their guilt, but also something equally important about their innocence and righteousness. To have faith as a Christian means that, through the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, the Christian has become entirely innocent and righteous in God’s eyes—that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” And to pray as a Christian means to hold fast to this innocence and righteousness in which Christians share, and for which they appeal to God’s Word and give God thanks.

Alongside objective innocence, which can of course never be really objective because the fact of the grace of God likewise always meets us personally, there can then stand in such a psalm the personal confession of guilt. This is again only a sign that I really embrace God’s cause. I can then ask even in the same breath: “Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people.”

It is a thoroughly unbiblical and destructive idea that we can never suffer innocently as long as some kind of fault still remains in us. Neither the Old nor the New Testament makes such a judgment. If we are persecuted for the sake of God’s cause, then we suffer innocently, and that means we suffer with God. That we really are with God and, therefore, really innocent is demonstrated precisely in this, that we pray for the forgiveness of our sins.

But we are innocent not only in relation to the enemies of God, but also before God, for we are now seen united with God’s cause, into which it is precisely God who has drawn us, and God forgives us our sins.

*Excerpt from Prayerbook of the Bible by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons

How sweet are your words to my taste! they are sweeter than honey to my mouth. —Psalm 119.103

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Numbers 26 (Listen – 7:47)
Psalm 69 (Listen – 4:04)

 

Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one’s thoughts.

―Elisabeth Elliot

Scripture: Psalm 66.19

But truly God has listened; he has attended to the voice of my prayer.

Reflection: In the Face of Unanswered Prayer
The Park Forum

Disobedience can fracture our relationship with God in such a way that he will not answer our prayers. David acknowledges this just prior to talking about answered prayer, “If I had harbored sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.”

Yet obedience doesn’t earn answered prayer. If this were the case Jesus’ experience in Gethsemane would have been vastly different.

Jesus obeyed every letter of God’s law with exacting precision and still faced unanswered prayer. “Remove this cup from me” he begged with such intensity the blood vessels under his skin ruptured mixing blood with sweat and tears. Yet the Father had other plans.

Christ would have known this—for, as Hebrews says, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” He faced greater battles than we face, yet he was perfect where we fail.

Christ not only prayed to have the cup of the crucifixion and God’s rejection taken from him, he also prayed, “Your will be done.” This is the prayer of a fully surrendered man—a man fully and sacrificially committed to the Father.

Unanswered prayer reveals whether our heart truly trusts God. In this way prayer is different from thinking about God. “To the thinker, God is an object. To one who prays, God is the subject,” observes Abraham Joshua Heschel in his book Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity.

What we receive in prayer is greater than any request we can make. In this way no prayer goes unanswered because all prayer deepens our relationship with God—something worth far more than anything we could imagine.

As for the particulars of our prayers, which are God’s joy to fulfill, “God will only give you what you would have asked for if you knew everything he knows,” says Timothy Keller.

Our intimacy with God is deepened through prayer—which is what we need most. Trust becomes the foundation we stand on when our prayers are unanswered. Our satisfaction in God makes him the object of our rejoicing when our prayers are answered.

Prayer: The Request for Presence

Protect me, O God, for I take refuge in you; I have said to the Lord, “You are my Lord, my good above all other.” —Psalm 16.1

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Numbers 24 (Listen – 3:37)
Psalm 66-67 (Listen – 2:43)

Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.

―Abraham Joshua Heschel

Scripture: Psalm 61.1-3

Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer; from the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I, for you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy.

Reflection: To Dream in League with God
By Abraham Joshua Heschel

Religion is a critique of all satisfaction. Its end is joy, but its beginning is discontent, detesting boasts, smashing idols.

The predicament of prayer is twofold: Not only do we not know how to pray; we do not know what to pray for. We have lost the ability to be shocked. Should we not pray for the ability to be shocked at atrocities committed by humanity, for the capacity to be dismayed at our inability to be dismayed?

The purpose of prayer is not the same as the purpose of speech. The purpose of speech is to inform; the purpose of prayer is to partake. In speech, the act and the content are not always contemporaneous. What we wish to communicate to others is usually present in our minds prior to the moment of communication.

In contrast, the actual content of prayer comes into being in the moment of praying. For the true content of prayer, the true sacrifice we offer, is not the prescribed word which we repeat, but the response to it, the self-examination of the heart, the realization of what is at stake in living as a child of God.

The quality of a speech is not judged by the good intention of the speaker but by the degree to which it succeeds to simplify an idea and to make it relevant to others. Ultimately the goal of prayer is not to translate a word but to translate the self.

Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.

Prayer, too, is frequently an inner vision, an intense dreaming for God – the reflection of the Divine intentions in the soul of humankind. We dream of a time “when the world will be perfected under the Sovereignty of God, and all the children of flesh will call upon Your name, when You will turn unto Yourself all the wicked of the earth.” We anticipate the fulfillment of the hope shared by both God and humankind. To pray is to dream in league with God, to envision God’s holy visions.

*Excerpted and abridged from Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity and Man’s Quest for God by Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Prayer: The Request for Presence

I call with my whole heart; answer me, O Lord, that I may keep your statutes. —Psalm 119:.45

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Numbers 21 (Listen – 5:03)
Psalm 60-61 (Listen – 2:27)

This Weekend’s Readings
Numbers 22 (Listen – 5:55) Psalm 62-63 (Listen – 2:44)
Numbers 23 (Listen – 4:01) Psalm 64-65 (Listen – 2:39)