A Ramble About Dangerous Prayers

When I was a kid, probably around six or seven, I remember after coming home from Sunday School one day, or it could have been the day after, praying and asking God for wisdom and understanding. We had just learned about King Solomon and him praying for wisdom instead of riches or anything else. Since God liked that better, it seemed the best thing I could pray for at the time. Later on, as I learned about David who was a man after God's own heart, I prayed and asked God so that I could be a man after His own heart, too. Still later, again after Sunday School as a kid, I prayed and asked God for the faith to move mountains. As a teenager and wanting to change from who I had been to do what was right, I prayed and asked God for everything St. Paul had. My exact words in my pious neediness were "I want it all." This was followed by a prayer to be like Jesus in everything. Finally, I prayed for humility, and that all glory would go to God and nothing to me. All throughout my teenage years I prayed to give my life freely to God so that He could use it in whatever way He wanted.


These are the prayers that God loves to hear us pray with sincerity. These are also the prayers that will ruin your earthly life.


It is no secret, and I have made it no secret, that my life has been one difficulty and setback after another. Every one of the plans I made for my future has come to rubbish. To this day I am practically penniless, and depend solely on the love and mercy of God for the daily needs, guidance, and protection of my family and myself. I am a priest without a parish from a denomination which is one of the poorest and smallest in the world. I am daily reminded of my own inadequacies and weaknesses. Our lives hang only by the thread which is held in God's hands.


God loves to hear these kind of prayers because they're what He wants most for our lives. But the means to get from where you began to where He wants you to finish are hard, dangerous, and totally humiliating. The only good way to counter the gluttony, avarice, and pride which this world infects us with is through hunger, poverty, and humiliation, and it is a truly rare person who doesn't have to be inflicted with these things to teach them. If you have any earthly ambitions you must weigh carefully what you ask of God in this regard, because He is likely to upend it in order to accomplish His goals with you.


Being an ignorant child, I wasn't so cautious. I wanted only the best of what God wanted for me and my life, and I rushed headlong without looking into places where angels backed off and crossed themselves, fearing to peer into the darkness beyond. I didn't know what that best was or what it entailed, and had I known then, or taken the time to think about it, I may have thought twice, maybe three times. Perhaps that's why God made me the way He did as a child, so that I would leap before I looked.


As I think back about it, I have many regrets in my life. But praying those prayers aren't a part of those regrets. I'm glad God made me such a reckless fool when it came to this, otherwise I might not have learned the lessons I did, or had the experiences which He so graciously allowed me; not to mention my family, my treatments, and every other single blessing God has given me. I would have missed out on nearly every good thing which has happened in my life because of my "knowing caution."


As I talked to my wife the other night about this, she related that she prayed those prayers too as a kid, not knowing what she was getting herself into. It's been extremely difficult for her as well, but she doesn't regret it either.


It's easier to pray these prayers in the ignorance of a child than it is in the knowledge of an adult. Perhaps this is part of what Jesus meant, among many things, that unless you become as a little child you can't enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Perhaps it's also what He meant when He said to count the cost of discipleship.


I do know this, however, that if you want to be rich and famous, if you want to have all of your earthly desires fulfilled, these are not the prayers for you. God is only too happy to answer these prayers, and to answer them with an overflowing abundance! There's a much wider highway off to the left for the the rich and famous seeking crowd.