Climbing onto the Father’s Lap

I’m usually up when my three year old daughter wakes up in the morning. She sometimes says little then, but instead just climbs onto my lap to be held. That sends an unspoken message of love far stronger than anything she could express verbally. And because of how well I know her, I understand what she needs then without her saying anything.

I wonder if the same thing isn’t true between us and God, if our coming to Him and quietly abiding in His presence—the spiritual equivalent of silently climbing onto His lap—doesn’t trigger the same feelings toward us that I feel toward my daughter. And just as I know my daughter’s needs without her explaining them, God knows what we need without our having to describe them in great detail.

Scripture supports that parallel. Ecclesiastes 5:1-2 and Matthew 6:7-8 explicitly tell us that we shouldn’t go on and on in our prayers, but instead should just come to God and trust that he knows our needs without our spelling them out in detail. The same concept is inherent in Matthew 6:31-33 and 7:9-11, which both tell us we can trust God to know, and meet, our needs if we simply seek him out. Indeed, Romans 8:26-27 makes it clear that God will understand and respond to our prayers even when we “do not know how to pray as we should,” making it clear that effective prayer is more a matter of relationship than rhetoric.

That’s not to say that we should hesitate to tell God our concerns; the Psalms and other portions of scripture encourage us to cast our burdens on God, Psalm 55:22, to “pour out” our hearts before Him, Psalm 68:2, and to bring “everything” to God in prayer, Philippians 4:6. See also also Luke 11:5-8 and 18: 1-8, I Peter 5:6-7, Hebrews 4:16, James 1:5. But what those passages speak to is the relationship with God that underlies such prayers, rather than the form of the prayers themselves.

(Other images about prayer were posted at Images From God on September 17, 17a, and 17b; October 8 and 17, November 13 and 19, 2004 and May 27, 2005.)