History belongs to the intercessors.

Prayer.

I don’t understand it.

who does?!

And honestly, during the past four years there have been times where it has been nearly impossible for me to pray.

I’ve found that I value liturgy more since I moved here.

Written prayers, the words of others giving voice to what my soul could not voice on it’s own

Sometimes it feels like God is not able or willing to answer my prayers.

I understand that for my “selfish” prayers.

But other prayers, for freedom, and restoration, for the end of suffering, and the protection of children – it’s harder for me to know how to feel, or what to think when those prayers seemingly go unanswered.

I’ve been reading “The Powers that Be” by Walter Wink (a great read). Some of what he says has re-framed prayer for me, in a way that is helpful for me. It makes me want to stand up and cheer. It makes me want to pray again, in a new and different way. Here’s an excerpt.

“Intercession visualizes an alternative future to the one apparently fated by the momentum of current forces. Prayer infuses the air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of the present.

History belongs to intercessors who believe the future into being. This is not simply a religious statement. It is also true of communists or capitalists or anarchists. The future belongs to whoever can envision a new and desirable possibility, which faith then fixes upon as inevitable.

This is the politics of hope. Hope envisages its future and then acts as if that future is now irresistible, thus helping to create the reality for which it longs. The future is not closed….

No doubt our intercessions sometimes change us as we open ourselves to new possibilities we had not guessed. No doubt our prayers to God reflect back upon us as a divine command to become the answer to our prayer. But if we are to take the biblical understanding seriously, intercession is more than that. It changes the world and it changes what is possible to God. It creates an island of relative freedom in a world gripped by an unholy necessity. A new force field appears that hitherto was only potential. The entire configuration changes as the result of the change in a single part. A space opens in the praying person, permitting God to act without violating human freedom. The change in even one person thus changes what God can thereby do in the world….

Praying is rattling God’s cage and waking God up and setting God free and giving this famished God water and this starved God food and cutting the ropes off God’s hands and the manacles off God’s feet and washing the caked sweat from God’s eyes and then watching God swell with life and vitality and energy and following God wherever God goes.

When we pray, we are not sending a letter to the celestial White House, where it is sorted among piles of others. We are engaged, rather, in an act of co-creation, in which one little sector of the universe rises up and becomes translucent, incandescent, a vibratory center of power that radiates the power of the universe.

History belongs to the intercessors, who believe the future into being. If this is so, then intercession, far from being an escape from action, is a means of focusing for action and of creating action. By means of our intercessions we veritably cast fire upon the earth and trumpet the future into being.”

Oh. Yes!