Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools: An Invitation to the Wonder and Mystery of Prayer

by Tyler Staton

“Anyone God uses significantly is always deeply wounded

On the last day, Jesus will look us over not for medals, diplomas, or honors, but for scars.”24 It is not by our gifts, insights, ideas, or qualifications that God is determined to heal the world, but by our scars. By his wounds we are healed,25 and by our wounds the healing is shared.

Could I make peace with not knowing why my prayers weren’t answered, or would this be the experience I define God by, the one experience that overwhelms all the others I’d had along the way? Could I continue to trust God without having answers and reasons? We are all going to face painful disorientation at some point, and the challenging invitation is to trust even in the darkness.”

Will the pain, suffering, and needs that intrude on our own stories harden our hearts, or will they soften our souls? How does the very pain that is eating us alive become an agent of deep transformation? We have to invite God—the very One who broke our trust—into the muck with us. We invite the One we are labeling “perpetrator” to be our healer. It’s the most courageous of all choices.

“The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without hope, faith, and love.”