More on Answering Prayers

I was listening to a class on “How to be spiritual in an unspiritual world”, the class talked a lot about prayer and it got me thinking on the issue.

I wanted to share a few insights from the class, and a few of my own.

First the class talked about the reason for prayer. If we understand the reason, we have a better chance of understanding the answers we get to our prayers. The example that was given was a farmer who is having a bad season, praying for crops. In this case, the goal of the interaction is better crops, the method of getting the goal, it by praying. Sometimes the prayer succeeds (in the form of better crops), and sometimes it fails. It’s very hard to understand why it works sometimes and not other times.

That’s all from the point of view of the farmer. Let’s look at this same situation from G-d’s point of view. G-d created us for the purpose of having a relationship with him – the ultimate pleasure in life is to connect to G-d. So from G-d’s point of view, the goal of the interaction is prayer and the method is the providing/withholding of crops. Let me say that again, from G-d point of view, the goal of the interaction is to connect to G-d, and the way G-d gets you to seek the connection to him is by providing/withholding something.

This all revolves around the issue of the soul. I’m not going to get into the issue of does the soul exist, the issue is which of these two statements are more connect “I have a soul” or “I am a soul”. There is a profound difference in how you perceive the world, based on which one of these you believe. This is an issue that came up in my exploring Musar, and an issue I plan to further explore and talk about at some later time.

Next the class talked about the two kinds of prayer. It did this by comparing the two parts of the morning service. In Psekei D’Zimrah, we thank G-d for all that he has given us. In the Amidah (which is the bulk of the 2nd part), we ask god for all that we don’t have. The Amidah is considered to be the more significant part of the service. Asking G-d for what we don’t have is deemed more important that thanking him for what we do. I’ll certainly need to think about that one more before I fully understand the message, but it certainly has the ring of a profound observation.

In the next few postings I’ll talk about some insight on prayer that I have had as a result of this class.