Lenten Devotion - Prayer
by K Scarry on March 10, 2025
Reflect:
“When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:7-8).
It is a vulnerable thing to be in need.
I’m writing to you from a friend’s home, where I’m staying for the next month. It’s been a year since a house flood displaced my husband and me. It's been a year since we sifted through our belongings, throwing them away one by one. It's been a year since we lost everything.
I pride myself on my figure-it-out and on the ways I can maneuver undaunted through life's curveballs. However, I do not always feel well-acquainted with the part of myself that knows what it is to be in real need.
Our Scripture today appears amid the Sermon on the Mount, the same sermon where Jesus offers unlikely blessings – to those who are persecuted, to those who mourn, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, among others. The same sermon where Jesus calls the people salt and light. The same sermon that calls us to love our enemies and, directly before our verses, calls us to be generous to those who are in need.
Then Jesus speaks about prayer:
When you pray, Jesus says, God knows what you need before you ask.
Reflecting on a year since we lost our home, I was talking to a friend about how easy it is to get caught up in all we have lost and all we don’t have, and how scared I sometimes feel about the future. However, if I reframe the situation ever-so-slightly, I can see that I always have had what I needed, whether I had prayed for it or not. Daily bread, indeed. There’s a version of the story of our year that is full of loss and heartache and sorrow, and it’s true.
There’s a version of the story of our year where we were well held:
A friend who brought groceries, mostly microwavable, for our multi-week hotel stay.
Friends who helped us go through our belongings.
Friends who held hope for us when we couldn’t access it ourselves.
Friends who prayed on our behalf - with their words and deeds.
God, who knew what we needed, even when we didn’t have the words to pray.
God, who gave us a year of always having what we needed, even though it almost never came how we expected.
Anne Lamott discusses how prayers often include “help,” “thanks,” or “wow.”
Help: we need, God.
Help me put one foot in front of the other on the days it’s hard to go on.
Help me be a person who lives the sermon on the mount.
Help us, we are people in need.
Thanks: For the fact that we are still standing after a year of so much loss. For all the ways you love us, especially through the community who rallied with us. For inviting us, too, to be people who stand with our neighbors in their time of need.
In prayer, you have seen us, known us, and tended to our every need. Wow.
Respond:
Think of a time you lost something - what are the stories you can tell about it? Note the true story of what you lost, and then the story of where God was, and how your needs were met.
Write your own “help, thanks, wow” prayer – noticing which come easiest to you, noticing what comes up as you consider each of these words.