DARE TO BE BOLD

One of the first prayers my Mom taught me to learn/memorize was the Lord’s Prayer, or as we called it “The Our Father”. Through my first many years of going to Mass, I said the prayer to myself as the priest said it in Latin. When the liturgy was allowed to be said in the vernacular, I could finally pray along with the priest who introduced us to the prayer with “we dare to say”. When I migrated to the Episcopal Church as a priest, I have been leading into the prayer with “we are bold to say”.

Do we dare to pray or are we bold to pray? Do we dare to approach God in prayer or are we so bold that we stand right up to God and make our wants known? They are wants as well as needs that we are about to verbalize in that prayer. Do we stand in awe of our God or do we take God for granted and lay our wants and needs on the line certainly and surely expecting that God will listen and respond?

It’s a little bit of both, I think, and not too much of either. It’s not a case of “How could you dare to approach God in prayer, you little Nobody?” Nor is it “I’m not afraid of God and not afraid to tell God want I want, so there!” It is somewhere in between. And, I think, that is what all prayer is about.

We stand before God in prayer knowing, certainly believing, that God listens and God cares but also aware of our many failings and shortcomings, certainly aware of our sinfulness and selfishness. We know we are not worthy to ask, sometimes wonder if we should ask, but ask anyway with a little trembling in our bones. At least that should be the case and certainly is when we are in serious need of God’s help.

On the other hand we know Jesus told us that we should pray. He always did. That is our example. He even taught us how to pray (The Lord’s Prayer). Thus, we can very well be so bold as to put before God in prayer our cares and concerns, our needs and our wants, and not be hesitant or afraid to do so. And so we do even as we know that God knows our needs even before we ask.

But we have to ask. So we dare to be bold. We come to God in prayer humble enough to know that in many ways we are unworthy even to dare to ask but bold enough to ask anyway. What is even bolder is that our asks come off as demands: Give us our daily bread, forgive us or sins and trespasses, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil. We’re daring to be bold enough to tell God what to do!

And so we should. I mean, if we want to blame anyone for taking this attitude, we can blame Jesus. He taught us how to pray. He told us the words to use. And so we do. Then we, as always, leave the rest in God’s hands. On our part, we have to dare enough and be bold enough to do our part in bringing about what we are praying for. Sometimes it is not much and sometimes it is a lot. Prayer is always a two-way street. Dare to be bold.