Election Eve Jitters
I’ve got so many thoughts running through my head tonight. Most center around the election. My stomach has been hurting all day long, I’m so excited and nervous about tomorrow. I heard several people being interviewed today on some NPR show today, supporters of McCain talking about how they pray every night that McCain will be elected President. I can’t understand that kind of praying, or that kind of God. What God needs to be told who should be president? The amount of hubris is stunning when you think about it. I have to believe in a God who is bigger than me, bigger than any political campaign, bigger than any agenda, any financial crisis, any war, any policy. Even though it makes my stomach ache I want so badly for Obama to be elected, I can’t pray for that happen. Though it can be unsatisfying at times, all I can do is to picture our country in God’s hands. This is how I pray for myself, for friends and for family and, when desperate for relief, for people that are living rent free in my head. I pray for God’s will to unfold and for the peace to trust that, no matter how the next four years or more play out, that God can transform our unbelievably tragic mistakes through God’s living grace, that divine alchemy that turns dross to gold. I’ve seen it over and over again in my own life – why can’t it work the same way on a much larger scale? I personally think that grace will flow a little easier through Obama… but hey, that’s just one woman’s opinion.
jenzai studio 
Funny, I was thinking as I was cleaning the kitchen how lately the only prayer I seem to manage which much conviction is “Thy Will,” being quite sure my own judgement and desires are unreliable.
I worried as I went to bed that I was being a little judgmental. Hey, whatever works for them, right? As for me, I’m with you: my own judgment and desires (not to mention my ability to see into the future) have proven to be quite unreliable.
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMMFG!
I am too jittery to pray anything else!
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with praying for specific things to happen, as long as the qualifier “not my will, but thine be done” is added. Actually, I think there’s a lot to be said for praying with boldness (a la Luther’s admonition to “sin boldly”), even though we know we may be totally out of line with God’s intentions. After all, in Luke and Matthew’s Gospels, even Jesus was not ashamed to ask God for something that, as it turned out, was not God’s will–“let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will, but as you will.”
I think that the danger on the other end of the spectrum is being so afraid that “maybe I’m wrong to pray for that” that one stops believing in the power or usefulness of prayer (except as a means of gaining perspective and humility, which is good, but unnecessarily limited), and moreover, it might lead one to doubt that one even knows that some things are good and desirable and ought to be prayed for, even though clearly they are (such as, relieving world hunger, fighting the AIDS epidemic, etc.)
Not that I’m trying to convince anyone to pray differently, but perhaps this helps you not be judgemental of people who pray that McCain will win(?).
On a more sober (!) note: the Brujo’s sponsor’s prayer, or one of ’em: “Surprise me.”
And She always, always does….
YES WE DID!
Hey, if sining boldly works for you, go for it!
I realized I was being judgmental pretty much as soon as I had hit “publish” on this entry. I certainly don’t really believe that we all have to pray the same way. Praying for specifics may very well work fine for that woman and countless others (though it didn’t seem to work for her very well last night. [oops! Did I just say that?]) I suspect my judgment was really more about her choice of candidate to pray for, anyway, and it just came out sideways.
I used to pray for specifics, but I found (and again, this is just for me) that it alienated me from God and actually exacerbated my judgmentalness. As I just demonstrated so publicly, I make the leap from “I know what’s best” to “they’re doing it wrong” with lightning speed! So, I’m thankful to have been given such a simple recipe for prayer, and so far I haven’t found it to be “unnecessarily limiting.” Some of us have to keep it simple, or we think (or pray) ourselves right into a hole.