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Prayer is like garbage


This post was published on Tuesday 21 August 2018.

Maybe prayer is like garbage.   I regard taking out the garbage as part of the daily tedium of life, and it is something I leave, wherever possible, for other household members to do.   Of course, I am wrong.   Taking out the garbage should be viewed as a daily sacrament, for garbage in itself is a sign of provision.   Potato peelings, apple cores, and squash seeds are silent witnesses that our Father is still feeding us.   So garbage is not a tedious detail but a divine blessing.   We can miss that because it is so routine.   I guess our problem is that we don’t think theologically about garbage.

When God listens to the voice of Manoah, or to our voice, we must never respond with a yawn.   We will trivialize prayer whenever we forget the repeated miracle it involves, the gracious condescension of the King of glory, who stoops down to listen to our verbs and nouns, our adverbs and questions, our groans and tears.

Dale Ralph Davis,  Judges: Such a Great Salvation, p.160-161.