Why don’t we pray? – Part 5

The Prodigal Son is an incredibly well known story (Luke 15:11-32).  But often the focus is on the younger son, who leaves home with his inheritance from his not-yet-dead Father, squanders it, and returns to find and experience the grace and kindness of the Father.

What is less often looked at is the older son, who stays at home all the time, working hard on the family estate, faultless in so many ways, and yet we discover in the story that he is every bit as lost as his younger brother.   We first get a hint of this, when the welcome home party for the younger son is in full swing, and the older son returns home.  Instead of entering into the house, he stays outside asking a servant what is going on.  Then angrily he confronts his Father with all the simmering resentment under the surface of his heart, due to his perceived lack of appreciation for all his hard work and the unfairness of the treatment of his brother.

The self-righteousness of the older brother is harder to see in our own hearts than the blatant rebellion of the younger son.  We can do all the right stuff.  Outwardly, we can seem a good Christian.  We can attend church; always helping out; serving; teaching; praying with others; bringing friends to church etc.  But we are doing all this out of duty.  We can even pray regularly.  But our prayer seems to revolve around the work we are doing.  The Father seems more like a boss, who is directing the work, than a loving dad who enjoys hanging out with his sons.

And deep in our hearts, the situation is even more desperate, when we find a moment to stop the activity to reflect on its condition.  We find we resent the success of others, even someone secretly hoping for others downfall or comeuppance.  The joy of others new found faith or simplistic versions of faith annoy us.  Occasionally the anger and resentment bubbles out, but mostly we keep it under control by business and noise and not stopping.

For if we stopped, we would be confronted with the hardness and darkness of our own heart.  We would be confronted by our own anger and jealousy.  We would be confronted by own lostness.  And we might also be confronted by the irresistible love of the Father, wooing us back home.

Why don’t we pray?  Because it is sometime just too scary to stop all the activity and to be confronted with ourselves, alone with God.

Tags: prayer