Quit the me-first life.
A good life is the best life,
A forever life.
It’s a caring-for-others kind of life
That makesYahweh smile,
That he never
Rejects,
That he establishes forever.
Me-first families are a disaster.
Again, others-oriented people
Are the real owners of the land.
It’s theirs forever.
(Everyday Psalms, Psalm 37, pages 86-87)
Did I say that I’m far too oriented toward myself? I did? Well, it’s true. And as we noted, this crack in our self-preoccupation brought on by prayer not only affects our relationship with God, it also affects our relationships with others. There is now a hole in the proverbial dike. God is leaking in. Others are leaking in.
Our most basic prayers are prayers about self. “Here I am.” “Save me.” “Help me.” “Forgive me.” And so on. Each of them start with me and where I am, what I’m doing. They deal with my wants and needs and feelings.
And that’s OK. That’s where we all start, because that’s what we know. Those wants and needs and feelings are noisy within us. They clamor for attention. So it’s not surprising that we’d give them attention and that this attention would be our primary attention.
But this attention needn’t be our only attention. This needn’t be the whole of of our praying. Once we begin praying about ourselves, there is always the option and opportunity to pray for others.
In my work as a hospital chaplain, I get people to talk about themselves. I hear all kinds of stories. Amazing stories. Boring stories. (Yep. People can talk on almost endlessly about droll details of their lives and do so tediously. Remember, we’re our own favorite subject.) And as people tell me these stories, I nudge them toward praying about these things, offering them to God in prayer. When they do so, I ask them about others who might have experienced or are currently experiencing similar situations to the ones they’ve just described and prayed about. “Your back is causing you excruciating pain. Ever think about others who feel a similar pain? How about adding them to your prayers as you pray for your own pain?” Surprisingly few have thought to do that on their own. But once they realize the prayers they pray about themselves can become triggers to pray similar prayers for others, their responses are remarkably the same: “Hey! That’s a great idea! I’ll do that.”
And just like that, their worlds have expanded. A pain new to them becomes a window into pains suffered by so many. The dike has burst and all sorts of people flood in.
Prayer makes our worlds larger. First by turning us toward God. Then by turning us toward others. And this is how we learn to love.
Prayer: I live such a collapsed-in-on-myself life, Lord. Living behind my eyes, I can’t help but see the world from my own perspective. But I hate how small I end up living because of it. Pull me out of my little world of self and into the much larger world of others. Draw me into the way of love, into an expanded life that considers others and not just my own concerns. Lead me into the others-oriented life you yourself lived, Jesus. In your name, I pray. Amen.