Cares and Prayers

I saw it on a church's marquee:  "Frequent prayers lessen daily cares."  It sounded, well, religious and truthful.  Certainly an invitation to develop a disciplined prayer life.  All good intentions.

Yet, for me, only a half-truth.  Prayer does lessen some stresses, but not always.  Frequent prayer can sensitize us more deeply to hear, listen for, pay attention to the hurts and groans of the world around us.  Frequent prayer may also increase our sense of human suffering, even our own.

Paul may have known prayer as a doorway into deeper suffering.  In Romans 12, he writes of having begged God three times to remove his "thorn in the flesh".  Was this Paul's attempt to lessen his daily care and hindrance through prayer?  The answer he receives is not a thorn lessened, but a thorn borne with the promise of God's presence to go with him.  "My grace is enough, all you need; my strength is made complete in weakness."

Though the marquee sounds comforting, it is only half-true.  The rest of the story is that frequent prayer deepens our sense of pain in our world and in our own souls.  Prayer does not protect us from cares or create carefree lives.

If prayer does anything, it plunges us head deep into the groans of life's journeys.