prayer – Jared Throneberry

We Still Need “Thoughts and Prayers”

In this digital age, whenever sad news is posted or a tragedy happens, we all feel compelled to comment. Typically, we have good intentions to show sympathy or give comfort by letting the person or group know they have an online community with them. But these sad events seem to happen too often, and too often our words of comfort come up short on originality.

This is even more challenging for famous people or politicians – those with a blue checkmark next to their Twitter handle. Not only are they expected to say something, their response must be to the liking of any potential reader. If not, prepare for an onslaught of them getting ripped to shreds for not saying enough, or doing enough, or saying too much, or missing the point, or having the audacity to misspell a word when death is on the line!

So the safest route for a while was to simply play it safe and offer a generic phrase to acknowledge the event and show concern but not risk saying the wrong thing. Thus the phrase “thoughts and prayers” was born. And then it was used by others and repeated and copied/pasted.

Unfortunately, too many tragedies happened. And what do you say this time that’s different than last time but still emphasizes your intent?

My thoughts and prayers are with those affected.

“Oh!? You said that last time and what good did it do???”

Nowadays, “thoughts and prayers” are the low-hanging fruit of a go-to comeback for any critic. (Nevermind how unoriginal it is to repeat overused one-liners to really stick it to that guy you despise on Facebook.)

Personally, I’ve had enough with debates online so I tend to just not say anything unless it’s a funny gif. I’d rather not type a single word for fear of saying the wrong thing from someone else’s perspective. But what’s the alternative for someone who is actually sad? For someone who is actually thinking about the people involved, and might actually be saying a prayer for them? Should the burden be on them to word it in such a way to not trigger the cynic? Or can we all lower our keyboard weapons and let people have their harmless, albeit generic comment?

The logic behind “thoughts and prayers” criticism is reasonable from one vantage point: there are problems in this world that may be fixed if certain action was taken, and by their perspective, simply saying “thoughts and prayers” is equivalent to no action at all. I could make the same argument for ANY digital comment made, including their critique. No comment is considered action unless someone acts on it. So the criticism is really invalid.

Let’s give the benefit of doubt to the the one making the comment and assume they might actually be taking the time to stop and think about the situation, as well as lifting up a prayer for those involved.

What good does it do? I have a few suggestions.

– Sympathy

Of all the people who know me personally, even those who never stepped in a Sunday morning church service, they have always shown appreciation if I pray for them. Whether you believe or not, there is an element of appreciation for someone to be willing to pray on your behalf. Take, for example, you’re in need of a job, and I say, “well, I know the head of a company who’s hiring. I’ll put in a good word.” You’d be delighted. Prayer is the same. I consider it an honor, privilege, and obligation to take the things that concern me and put them at the feet of a higher power.

There are millions of things not on my radar. I don’t care about them, and as a result, I don’t pray about them. If I actually took the time to comment “thoughts and prayers” on a post, I care about it. I really do! If a story has made it’s way through the noise of the rubbish out there to the point someone sees it, thinks about it, and makes a sympathetic comment, they shouldn’t be ridiculed for it.

“Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is”
Rollo May

I suppose we should at least appreciate that there is someone who cares, AND another one who cares enough to criticize. There are probably millions of others who simply do not care enough to do one or the other.

But when you’re the one who’s hurt, a little bit a sympathy goes a long way.

– Motivation

Have you ever had that little voice in your head nagging you to do something? Have you had a passing thought but you keep letting it pass by? Have you had this disturbance in your gut that has nothing to do with food and you can’t shake it?

I had it for a while with broken down cars on the side of the road. I told myself “next time I won’t be in such a rush and will stop and help.” Time flew by and I probably passed by dozens over weeks, always too busy to stop. Finally, the day came where I was on my way home, with no particular plans, and saw a car stuck in the turning lane. I turned my hazard lights on, and as I walked over, a guy from church comes to help, walking from the other side. We laughed about the coincidence and pushed the car out of the way.

I wasn’t super proud of myself for stopping. More than that I wondered if this is an every day task for the other guy. If his heart was just that generous in general and didn’t need months of convincing to do it.

We’re not all the same. Motivation to do good can take time. It took years before I ran out of excuses to volunteer for a youth mentoring program, but I’m glad I finally did. Maybe people who comment on unfortunate news often enough are one by one motivating themselves into future action.

– Power

Kierkegaard said “The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” I’m not sure of his context, but I would change it: “prayer is to influence God AND change our nature.” For the one who prays sincerely, they believe there is power in the act of prayer for changes to occur. There are stories upon stories that would seemingly prove the power of prayer, but I suppose all of them could be disregarded as coincidence. There are even statistics I could present to show the effectiveness of prayer with medical patients. But the intent of a prayer is not necessarily to convince the world of it’s effectiveness, but to lift up to God the prayer itself.

Even though movies might represent prayer as a last resort action, many of the strongest people of faith go to prayer as their initial reaction. They’ve had a life full of answered prayers and the best thing they could possibly do for you, is to pray. The best thing I would ask them to do for me, is to pray.

I’ll be the first to preach one of my favorite verses “If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?” But in the same letter he says “pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”

If I could do one thing, and only one thing, I would offer up a prayer. If I truly believe what it is I confess to believe, then I believe God has the power to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine, far outweighing anything I could do on my own. And offering “thoughts and prayers”, might be overwhelmingly more than you would ever think is possible.

Foster Care, Life Lessons

Awaken in Prayer

This past month a few people organized an event where churches all around the area would pray for every person in Nashville. To participate you got a packet with instructions, pamphlets for guidance, and a list of 15 first-names and their address. The instructions were to pray for each name everyday and send them a note to simply let them know they had been prayed for. I don’t know the official numbers, but if I’m just estimating that there are possibly 750,000 names and 15 names per person, that could be almost 50,000 people praying…

for every person
by name
every day
for 30 days.

That’s amazing to me. Tens of thousands actively praying in a positive way for strangers not knowing their demographics, circumstances, or backgrounds. Faceless people.

Using some pretty basic googling skills, I could have a picture of every person on my list within a few minutes. (Welcome to the digital age!) I chose not to, but it wasn’t hard to assume the race and class of the people on my list judging by the sound of the first name and knowing the zip code. My list had addresses from a more affluent side of town. But even then, my first thought was all these people could be in any number of circumstances at the moment. They could be undergoing loss, or health problems, or stress, or hopelessness. Or… not.

I didn’t realize there was a booklet in the packet that provided you with a daily prayer example, ironically I did a very similar thing. I came up with something to ask for that would fit anyone. In many cases, what I would want someone to have prayed for me that day. A few examples:
Soften their hearts
Give them guidance
Give them a Stronger faith
Bring someone in their life to bless them
Health
Them to see God at work in their life
Stay pure in heart
Give them peace
To forgive and be forgiven
Give them daily bread
Find their Purpose
Bring them joy
Lay their burdens down

It wasn’t weird to me at all to pray for people I didn’t know. I would take the paper and stare at each name, one by one. I felt like I was getting to know them. Often I would get an image in my head of what circumstance they might be in, and that maybe this prayer was something they really needed. Who knows if any of it would’ve been accurate, but it just proved to me more and more why doing this was so important.

Our church hosted a time of prayer on Wednesday nights during this period. Just a dimly lit room with soft music, papers with guided prayers or lists of more names were available, and some blank cards to write letters to people in our congregation. This was something I didn’t know I needed. It was so refreshing and relaxing to have a period of dedicated time to simply sit with my thoughts. I prayed for some people in my life and wrote a card.

When it was almost time for it to end, our minister walked over to me and my wife and prayed over us. He spoke words of encouragement, validated our efforts as parents and foster parents, and asked for God to be close to us during these stressful days. Whether he knew it or not, this past month has been excruciatingly stressful, having had an uncle pass away, losing many of my co-workers to outsourcing, having to work extra hard and extra long days, on top of the normal busyness of a life with kids and foster kids. All of this boiled up and overflowed in the form of moisture in my eyes.

Now, I’ll cry at a movie or sometimes when telling a really personal story, but not simply by someone talking to me. Like a facade falling off a building, the false sense of strength and composure I had been presenting to the world came crumbling down. I was exposed and thankful. For a moment I could breathe again. I realized in all of these days of praying for other people, I neglected to pray for myself. You would think that’s a good thing, but that’s not what we’re called to do. We’re called to love others AS ourselves, not instead of ourselves.

I really appreciated being prayed for. Maybe the people on my list did too. My guess is the creators of the project knew the double-meaning of Awaken when choosing the name. The initial thought being that we would Awaken the people of Nashville to a life with Christ. But just as important, that we, the Church, Awaken to become Christians who desire to pray for others. Christians who want the best for our unknown neighbors. People willing to take time to bring a name before the God we believe has the power to make a difference.

If we believe in an all-powerful God, and that He has called us to love and good works, then we should be inspired to pray. Those prayers will then compel us into action to treat each stranger we encounter as if they may be the person we just spent 30 days praying for.

Dad Revelations, Foster Care, Life Lessons, Motivation, Parenting

Dad Revalations: Whatcha doin?

Last fall, I was working on putting up a fence around the back patio steps where there’s a significant drop-off around the perimeter. The social worker conducting our home study left no room for misinterpretation by saying, “um, so we’ll need to do something about this.” Point taken. By using anything I could gather from around the house, and only the necessary items from Lowes (like the fence part because my wife said the chicken wire from the garden wouldn’t suffice), I managed to get something up that resembled a fence.

The last piece wouldn’t sit level so I used the closest thing within reach which happened to be the kids’ yellow duck-head-handled garden tools. As I was scraping around the edge of the patio where my 2-year-old son loves digging in the dirt, he noticed I was doing one of his favorite activities. I could hear the tap-tap-tap of his little shoes running up behind me, a pattern that only occurs when he’s excited, like for bath time or we’re getting a piece of cheese.

“Daddy, whatcha doin’?!” and laid his little hand on my shoulder. If he’s asked me that question directly before, I don’t remember it. This may be the first time I’ve noticed it because I was doing something “manly” around the house (with a yellow duck-head-handle rake) and my son wants to know what I’m doing. This calls for one of those “Well, son….” type of responses. And now I totally sound like my dad.

My kid watches me. When he copies me doing something nice, it’s cute. When he copies me doing something less than admirable, I become hyper-sensitive to everything that I do.

Lately, I’ve been noticing how he picks up on what other people do. He’ll sing the songs his sister sings. Something about a robot from a Pinkalicious show. Maybe I spelled that wrong; I’m purposefully trying to not show interest in a show called Pinkalicious.

He also has picked up the habits of our foster kids right now and their favorite word, “No.” Supposedly, as a parent you’re supposed to ignore “junk behavior.” Maaaan, that’s hard to do when a toddler straight-face tells you NO, like a boss.

It’s the bandwagon tendency in all of us – to do what we see, what’s around us, what others are doing. Sometimes completely mindless, as in the clothes we buy from the store because it’s what they’re offering this season. Sometimes it’s a little intentional, like fixing our hair just a little different or the shows we watch. Sometimes we hear the singing of the Sirens and we float through the air following the scent of the next best thing.

When I was a teenager there was this trendy saying that was used often, maybe you remember “what would Jesus do?” It was typically used as a litmus test for the various situations teens got themselves in. “Would Jesus pick this girlfriend or that girlfriend?” “Would he cheat on his midterms or would he…. not cheat on his midterms?”

As popular of a phrase as it was, I’m sure it was very helpful to many people. But I think there’s a better question to be asked. Not what Jesus would do in the situation we put ourselves in, but what would He be doing? How would he be spending his time?

If we want to know what it is He would be doing, we need to look at what he did:

He cared about people on a very personal, individual level
He spent time resting and in prayer
He was forgiving of those who knew they had failed, and critical of those who proudly said they had it all together
The woman at the well who, even with a past, was the catalyst for a whole community after having a conversation with Him
You have the woman caught in adultery and he protected her from attackers and showed her mercy saying “Go and sin no more”
The poor widow with the two coins he said was the greatest of givers
He challenged people to be better and have a stronger faith
He cared for the sick and hurting
He cried with His friends
He willingly gave His life and His life’s work
He prayed for others
and countless more examples…

We do what the apostles did, like when they said, “”Lord, teach us to pray.” We ask questions like,
“What should I be doing instead?”
“What am I capable of that I’m not currently taking advantage of?”
“Who needs me?”
“How can I help?”

Instead of navel-gazing, waiting for someone to fix us, we can have a broader perspective. We can look at life with a wide-frame lens from a higher vantage point and wonder what’s possible. We can take a moment to look around at the good things already happening and ask “God, what are you doing over there? I can tell something’s going on. I see You’re up to something. What is it? I want to be a part of that?”

Hopefully, it will be like the many times my kids’ shoes will tap-tap-taps up to me, lay their hands on my shoulder and say, “Daddy, whatcha doin’?!” I hope they find me doing great things. I hope they want to do those things, too.