Prayer at the Loose Ends - Part 2

How do we pray through sorrow and sin, into God’s peace? Barbara Sampson takes us on a weekly journey, as we pray through our own ‘Easter Saturday’ of watching and waiting.

Week Three:
Mary, did you know? Praying for our children

If my mother had still been alive, today—20 April—would have been her 109th birthday. Born in 1910, she died at the age of 61, just a few days after Easter 1972. My first baby had been born 18 days earlier, a few days before Easter. What a mingling of life and death, joy and sorrow that year brought to me.

There was gift in the mingling, however. That year I understood more deeply than ever before how Easter is the story of life and death, joy and sorrow mixed together. As the hymn writer Isaac Watts wrote: ‘See from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down … ’

Thinking of my mother, my thoughts also go to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Scripture tells us that she was there at the cross, watching as he died. In a final act of love towards his mother, Jesus gently commits her into the care of his dear friend John. The following day, Easter Saturday, that in-between day after the crucifixion and before the resurrection, is understood as a day of holding vigil. A day for weeping tears, remembering, waiting.

Mary had long years of practice at doing these very things. At his birth, blessing and favour came together in the glory song of the angels and the wild exuberance of the shepherds. Eight days later, on Jesus’ presentation at the temple, the first hint of a shadow appeared as the righteous man Simeon spoke of the salvation that this child would bring to the world—and the sword that would pierce his mother’s very soul. Mary, the account tells us, treasured and pondered both the joyful and the heavy things that were spoken about her son.

‘Mary, did you know?’ sings Hayley Westenra. Of course she did not know. How could she? How does any mother—even the mother of the Son of God—know what will happen to her child?

Could Mary know about the terrible day when she realised he was missing from the company of pilgrims returning home after their trip to Jerusalem for the Feast of Passover? Her anxiety at losing him and her relief at finding him in the temple poured out together in rebuke, ‘Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I … ’

Could she foreknow the time when she and her other children would come looking for him, concerned that he wasn’t eating or looking after himself? ‘Your mother and family are outside demanding to see you,’ he was told, but Jesus ignored them.

How would Mary know how to pray for her son when she saw the miracles he performed, causing some to love and follow him and others to plot his arrest and murder?

A friend asked me recently how to pray for one’s children. I made a Mary kind of response, holding my arms down at my sides, palms open and facing upwards, in a gesture of letting go. Not knowing, it seems to me, is the most ponderous (meaning ‘heavy’) part of allowing our children to grow up and to follow the call of God that is upon them.

Mary didn’t know what would happen to her son and we don’t know either where the path will take our children. All we can do—the best thing, in fact, that we can do—is to daily wrap them in bigger words than our own and then release them into God’s all-knowing love and care.

Week Four:
Prayer before a hamper full of sin

I grew up on a farm in Southland and remember my dad coming in from tending the sheep or milking the cow and taking off his muddy boots at the back door before going into the ‘washhouse’ (never called the ‘laundry’) to scrub his hands clean. He would not think of coming into the kitchen with his boots still on and his hands dirty.

That memory comes back to me today as I come to prayer. I, too, need a way of dealing with the mud and mess of my sins, my failures and offences. An image rises stark and clear in my mind, not of muddy boots, but of a clothes hamper. This is where I am invited to toss my sins. Thank God he can deal with it all, no matter how murky and messy the pile might be.

A hamper full of sin. Mmm, I realise I have some confessing to do. I let my mind go back to people and places where I know I caused distress or offence by my words or actions.

I remember as a child prancing through our house as I brought a necklace to show to a dear friend who was visiting. My mother stopped me in my tracks, telling me not to be so vain. Our friend loved the necklace but my mother’s words stung me for years afterwards.

I remember cutting the strap of my older sister’s leather bag, for no particular reason. I remember the time I deliberately dropped some milk from the lamb’s bottle onto the heat lamp that was keeping the little creature alive—just to see what would happen.

As an adult there have been times when I have got out of step with someone dear to me and I’ve felt pained and ashamed. Recently I felt a sense of failure when someone I hadn’t met before came to speak to me about her faith journey. Our time together seemed to go well but then suddenly a sense of awkwardness came upon us like a sudden change in the weather. Somehow a comment I made offended or upset her and I felt miserable.

I hate the thought of offending or disappointing people, not living up to expectations. Does this mean I am slowly dying of terminal niceness, as a friend once suggested?

During my prayer time today these jagged memories surface, scrabbling and scrapping for my attention. What do I do with this unruly bunch? I picture a large clothes hamper, a bit battered and worn, and into this container I toss each memory as it comes with its fist raised ready to fight. Then what do I do?

The Holy Spirit gently tells me to pour out the contents of the hamper full of sin at the feet of Jesus and ask him to deal with them. As I wait I see him scooping them up, then throwing them up to the Father and letting them dissolve in the shimmering light of his forgiveness.

The psalmist also found a way of dealing with his sins. He wrote: ‘When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord”. And you forgave the guilt of my sin,’ (Psalm 32:3-5). Hallelujah!

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By Barbara Sampson (c) 'War Cry' magazine, 20 April 2019, p20-21  - You can read 'War Cry' at your nearest Salvation Army church or centre, or subscribe through Salvationist Resources.