The Creativity of Prayer

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

In recent months, prayer became difficult. Not because I didn’t want to pray, but because whenever I did so, a feeling of futility would sweep in. But the futility was not what you might expect. It was a sort of back-door faith that God already knew my thought before I’d uttered it, as the Psalmist might say, and beyond that, God already knew the need and was on it. So why was I bothering to ask? And in his wisdom, the thought went, he had already decided what to do about it.

Ah, the old free will question raises its head again.

Somewhere in my notes for Act One: Writing for Hollywood is the following quote: “God created until he created a being who could create, then he stopped.” While I disagree with the strict theology of the statement (I think God is still creating), I affirm the basic thrust of it. That for some reason, the Maker of things decided to create a being that would join him in the creation. And that the creative acts of the creature would have meaning, reality, and long term consequences for both good and evil.

Recently, while trying to come to terms with this prayer thing, it struck me that prayer is an essentially creative act, especially if we believe God bothers to hear us in a truly interactive fashion. That as in all things, we have choice as to what we call God’s attention to. Now that’s an odd statement, as if God needs his attention called to anything, but isn’t that in essence what prayer is? A paying of attention, a joining with God (as Dallas Willard might say) in the ongoing unfolding of his kingdom?

If artists call an audience/viewer to attend to a particular thing, isn’t that what we are doing as we play to the audience of one in our prayer life? Aren’t we calling God to join us in attending to a particular person, or need, or hope?

Prayer…a strange and mysterious thing, as with all things of power…