Prayer in the Night: Part I

 What does night mean to you? Is it a time of rest and rejuvenation? Do you look forward to the end of the day with all its work and worry? Or does darkness bring with it a sense of dread? Do your thoughts begin to spiral and the "what ifs" multiply? Tish begins her book by looking at the night and what it means to different people at different times in history. When the prayer of Compline was first written, nighttime was a different creature. They did not have electric lights and cell phones, ambulances, ERs and 911. There were no security systems on the houses and the threat of thieves or worse was very real. Tish explores how, "we... face our vulnerability in a unique way as darkness falls." She considers the way, apart from the distraction of daytime, we are faced with amplified grief and anxiety.

 The prayer of compline is from a monastic tradition dating back to the sixth century where Benedict and his fellow monks would pray eight times a day, starting with Matins before dawn and finishing with Compline at bedtime. It includes a confession, a reading from the Psalms or other scriptures, written and responsive prayers, and a time for silence or personal prayer. Why am I, and why is Tish, attracted to this scripted, written prayer? She shares that in her moment of deep need she was, "reaching for a reality that was larger and more enduring than what I felt in the moment." (1) In this historic prayer, she felt the communion of the church, their corporate faith reaching back through centuries - millennia even - holding her up when she couldn't stand on her own. I get that. In her faith walk, she has learned that, "Inherited prayers and practices of the church tether us to belief, far more securely than our own vacillating perspective or self-expression." (2)

 But these prayers don't just give us the words we lack in the moment, they teach and shape us. I love the way Tish puts it, "We come to God with our little belief, however fleeting and feeble, and in prayer we are taught to walk more deeply into truth." (3) The vulnerability we experience in the "dark night of the soul" isn't one that can be satisfied with a trite saying or band-aid platitude. We need something that helps us walk with God in the deep, hard stuff or, as Tish puts it, "We need practices that don’t simply palliate our fears or pain, but that teach us to walk with God in the crucible of our own fragility." (4) I love her knack for descriptive language! 

 In the next chapter, Tish makes a statement that both deeply resonates with me and terrifies me, “You cannot trust God to keep bad things from happening to you,”(5) That's not what any of us want to hear, is it? We want to expect God to smooth things over in our lives, to guide us around tragedy, to keep us safe. But where in the Bible do you read that He has promised this to us? Just because we want something, does not make it true. So, then she asks the hard question, the one we don't want to give voice to, "But if God cannot be trusted to keep bad things from happening to us, how can he be trusted at all?"(6) That's one of those questions that can keep a person up at night! Here she interacts with a concept I'd never heard named before, theodicy. This is the word that is given for the "problem of pain," that question of how can a good God let bad things happen? It gives voice to the crisis of faith that comes along with suffering. I'll admit, when I learned this term, it brought me a sense of relief. What I was feeling, thinking, experiencing was so common there was a name for it! Other people, lots of other people, had wrestled with this as well. I was not alone. Many people, some that I love dearly, have dealt with this conundrum by turning their backs on God. As Tish puts it, they use unbelief as a form of protest. If God's not going to do what they want Him to, then they won't believe in Him, like they're punishing Him in some way. But Tish spoke eloquently to this approach when she shared, "If there is no God of love, questions about theodicy evaporate, but so does any redemptive meaning our pain might have, any transcendent story in which we might situate our suffering."(7) In God, we must struggle with the tension between a Heavenly Father that loves us and One that allows terrible tragedy to happen, but we also find purpose and meaning. To put it into a context I can identify with, sometime a parent allows their child to experience the consequences of their actions when they are young so that they can learn and avoid worse consequences when they are older. I'm not saying that all pain is a consequence of your actions or you deserve it or anything, I'm simply giving an example of why a loving parent might allow pain or hardship into their child's life. I know that as a mom of teens I often wanted to swoop in and rescue them, shield them from pain and hardship, but I didn't because I loved them. I can only believe that God has very good reasons for allowing these impossible to understand circumstances. I can only walk through this life in faith.

 It is here that we encounter the mystery of theodicy. "I have come to see theodicy as an existential knife-fight between the reality of our own quaking vulnerability and our hope for a God who can be trusted," (8) Tish writes. That mystery brings with it a tension because it cannot be solved. There is no 'good answer,' and even if there were we would not be satisfied with it. We don't want an answer, we want a solution. We want God to fix the pain and the hurt and the injustice. We want Him to take action. Job posed these questions to God Himself and God's answer, "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone-- while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?"[Job 38:4-7 NIV] and it goes on like that for the next couple of chapters. The gist of it, at least as I understand it, is summed up quite well in Isaiah 55:8-9, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." And while this might give a satisfactory academic answer, "We live in the meantime. And in this meantime, how can we endure such a mystery?"(9) That is a question we must all wrestle with, must all decide on because, "If the question of whether God is real or not—or of whether God is kind or indifferent or a bastard—is determined solely by the balance of joy and sorrow in our own lives or in the world, we will never be able to say anything about who God is or what God is like. The evidence is frankly inconclusive."(10) So if we cannot weigh and measure God based on the good and bad we experience in our lives, how do we know that He is good? 

 "Mysteriously, God does not take away our vulnerability. He enters into it... To look to Jesus is to know that our Creator has felt pain, has known trouble, and is well-acquainted with sorrow."(11) And this is not just the historic Jesus we read about in the Bible, "We find he is here with us, in the present tense. He participates in our suffering, even as—mysteriously—in our suffering we participate in the fullness of Christ’s life."(12) The fellowship of suffering is a unique club, one no one wants to join but for those who have felt its deep connection are forever blessed. In our suffering, we come to know Him better, in a way we could never learn from a book or a sermon. So, what can we take away from all this?

Here's the Thing: "The hope God offers us is this: he will keep close to us, even in darkness, in doubt, in fear and vulnerability. He does not promise to keep bad things from happening. He does not promise that night will not come, or that it will not be terrifying, or that we will immediately be tugged to shore. He promises that we will not be left alone. He will keep watch with us in the night." (13)

(1) Warren, Tish Harrison. Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (p. 8). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. 

(2)Warren, Tish Harrison. Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (p. 16). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. 

(3)Warren, Tish Harrison. Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (p. 17). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. 

(4) Warren, Tish Harrison. Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (p. 19). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. 

(5)Warren, Tish Harrison. Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (p. 22). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. 

(6) Warren, Tish Harrison. Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (p. 22). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. 

(7) Warren, Tish Harrison. Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (p. 24). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. 

(8) Warren, Tish Harrison. Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (p. 25). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. 

(9) Warren, Tish Harrison. Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (p. 27). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. 

(10) Warren, Tish Harrison. Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (p. 27). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. 

(11) Warren, Tish Harrison. Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (p. 29). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. 

(12) Warren, Tish Harrison. Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (p. 30). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. 

(13) Warren, Tish Harrison. Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (pp. 32-33). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.