Dishwater Prayers

by Rev. Alan R. Wolcott

No doubt it’s more sanitary than simply stashing them in the cupboard unwashed, but we haven’t yet convinced the kids that dish crew means taking time enough to check that the gravy train actually let go of the dinner plates. Mostly they manage just brief introductions to the wash and rinse water. You have to wonder if tepid hydrolysis, a half squirt of soap and a swirling rag do more than satisfy allowance requirements. (This almost justifies the cost of a dishwasher!)

Too often and for too long my prayers have been equally benign. In place of scalding hot intercession, “If it be Thy will” has been substituted. In lieu of persistent importunity until Heaven’s plan is made clear there has been the nostrum, “Later is also an answer.” Instead of clinging to the promise, “Ask and you will receive” there has been tolerance of status quo—“the mess we’s in”—and spiritual stagnation.

Dishwater prayers are better than none. But, somehow it’s hard to imagine Daniel, Hannah or David clasping dishpan hands. The pattern for prayer in the Bible is so much more efficacious, so much more potent, so much more costly—it was in prayer that Jesus sweat great drops, like blood.

The difference between where I am and where I would be is not simply geographic—though there is little doubt that I must enter into “the secret place of the Most High” more often. Nor is it simply positional—though again, entry into Heaven’s Court demands bent knees, and too often I have barged arrogantly in to demand audience. No. The reason I do not know what to ask, or how to ask it, or when, is because I do not know the One of whom I am asking.

Here is the crux. Because I knew my dad (as a boy), I knew what and when and how to ask in order to receive. Before ever posing a request, it was possible to weigh it against known experience. This was not guesswork, nor were answers unexpected, or long delayed.

Those who know God, dare to pray this way. They know to persist, to expect, to believe, to act. With confidence they can predict how God will respond. Surely here is why Paul made his greatest pursuit to know Christ, for “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Mt 11.27 NIV).

Nearly one hundred years ago Andrew Murray wrote, “A life marked by daily answer to prayer is the proof of our spiritual maturity; that we have indeed attained to the true abiding in Christ; that our will is truly at one with God’s will; that our faith has grown strong to see and take what God has prepared for us, that the Name of Christ and His nature have taken full possession of us; and that we have been found fit to take a place among those whom God admits to His counsels, and according to whose prayer he rules the world” (from With Christ in the School of Prayer).

This sort do not have dishwater praying hands!

“God, give me yourself that I may always ask and receive, seek and find, knock and know the door will be opened.”

Amen.

For a PDF version of this document, click here.

VT-Mustard Seed

Dishwater Prayers

by Rev. Alan R. Wolcott