After last week’s post, I realized how many prayer posts I have had in the previous two years. This post includes a poem I wrote about prayer with a summary of those previous posts. Except for the Tyler Griffin post last week, these prayer posts came about as I talked with my brother and His wife as we dealt with his terminal illness. He was a great mentor and friend, and we would often spend 2-4 hours talking gospel topics whenever I visited. We had differing views on God’s omniscience, which made for some energetic conversations over the last year. It was in those conversations that I derived many of these prayer posts for mostmovedmover.com.

Poem

by J. Hathaway

It seems that you will listen to me when I pray,
but some say, ‘Only if you get it your way.’
They argue that you can’t be wrong,
so I have to follow the solo of your song
They argue that you’re the only true teacher,
so I have to listen to your eternal lecture.
Or that you know everything about me and our future,
so I can’t be anything more than a program on your computer.
All those examples explain how I listen to you when I pray
but they act like you aren’t interested in creating with me each day.
They strip me of my agency to create a relationship with you.
They bind up your agency as if you couldn’t choose too.
They leave out your ability to respond,
your ability to react to my faith and my song.

What does it mean to listen to another in time?

I am sure it means more than knowing the answer.
It must include the ability to banter.
Yes, you are a teacher that avoids the soapbox.
You want to discover with us as we talk.
You can respond to my prayer in love both day and night.
You are willing to see things in another light.
You are infinitely willing to choose a relationship
over being right in something like a dictatorship.
I know that when we listen to each other
that is when we can grow together.

Historical Posts

• March 2019; Is prayer a test or a relationship? - This post was a culmination of many thoughts I had developed in the first few months of my blog. My brother was the one that introduced me to the story of Joseph Smith blessing his sick child. One quote, ‘Prayer felt like a test, and I failed as I could never quite get the right answer. I didn’t understand that prayer was relational.’
• August 2019;The importuning Joseph, the lost pages, and relational theology (D&C 3:1-2, D&C 10:1-3) - I finished this post and used it in a conversation with my brother that prompted the post on Joshua and the Gibeonites.
• September 2019; Relational Agency: Joshua, the Gibeonites, and the Lord - My brother brought up the Gibeonite story in a conversation concerning Joshua. My brother didn’t see this as God changing his mind to ‘hearken unto the voice of man.’ I can’t remember what he thought.
• November 2019; Is there a science to answered prayers? - My brother believed that God had answered his prayers and that he would be healed. My sister-in-law was wondering why those prayers and blessings were not happening.
• December 2020; Is prayer just for us to get cosmically in line with God’s only path (A response to More Purpose in Prayer by Tyler Griffin)? - Over a year after the previous post on prayer, I added this post last week. In the March 2019 post, I said, ‘As I have pondered what love and friendship are and how I experience those emotions, I realized that they grow when those in the relationship work together.Love is not being told what to do but discovering together what we can do.’ Tyler’s comments in his BYU Education Week video seemed like a direct challenge to what I had worked out on prayer, and I felt it merited a response.

Conclusion

Tyler and my brother both seem to want God to listen to our prayers but are unwilling to define that listening as anything that could alter God’s ‘fixed-future-omniscience.’ We are expected to pray for God’s blessing. Still, he already knows that blessing and has seen Himself giving us that blessing in His understanding of the future. We are merely praying to get inline with the Great Oracle’s perfected future vision.

I spent 40 years trying to reconcile prayer to that belief, and it never worked. Prayer is not a test of my ability to get cosmically in line with God’s only path but a time for me to importune God as we join together in love, not a science experiment. As we have seen in earth’s history, authentic love is complicated, messy, and uncontrollable. God knew, knows, and sees those loving possibilities with each of His children.

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