What is prayer?

[jmcrae]

Thanks for the real-world examples. These are, of course, quite significant. But, even so, only the last comes close to a “conversation”.

The important thing to understand is that I am only having one conversation with God, and it is taking my entire life to have it.

I don’t go into prayer thinking that God is going to reply to each sentence. Rather, God is going to reply to the whole prayer, maybe directly afterwards, or maybe three days from now, or even a year from now - maybe in a way that I can see or hear, or else maybe “behind the scenes” and I don’t notice until much later that He has done so.

 

[Ignatius]

Ignatius:

Actually, to pray means simply to petition or ask. I pray thee, kind sire, delve ye into the etymology of thee worde.

Bubba Switzler:

This is, of course, a traditional concept of prayer, one that preceeds Christianity and Judaism;

Ignatius:

You need to do a little scholarship my friend. The Christianity is 2000 years old and Judaism is at least 4000 years old. The modern English language developed less than 600 years ago

Obviously I was referring to the activity and practice of prayer, not to the English word “prayer”. The former is older than the Bible, both the King James version and the Hebrew Torah.

Actually if you look at your response to my initial post(see quote above) it is clear that activity andpractice of prayer is not even mentioned and is, therefore not what we were discussing.

I said “Actually, to pray means simply to petition or ask. I pray thee, kind sire, delve ye into the etymology of thee worde.”
To which you replied: “This is, of course … precedes Christianity and Judaism”.

So, how is that “obviously referring to activity and practices of prayer”? In the above conversation, it is not obvious at all. Quite the contrary, previous practices weren’t even part of the conversation.

You should remember when posting here, that your posts remain and so you are going to have to try to be consistent. You can’t convolute the conversation the way you may do in verbal conversations.

Think of it as having a permanent recording of whatever you’ve said.

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

So, how is that “obviously referring to activity and practices of prayer”?

Because a) the subject of this thread is prayer, not “prayer”, and b) the discussion has been about the activity and practice of prayer.

But even with respect to “prayer” your point about the relative novelty of the English word is mistaken. The English word derives from the Latin precari which means to beseech, and the Sanskrit word pṛcchati.

Thus, as I replied, the meaning, even of the literal word itself, is at least as old as Latin and Sanskrit. That goes back quite a bit further than your 600 years.

 

[Ignatius]

Bubba Switzler;6174623:

Ignatius:

Actually, to pray means simply to petition or ask. I pray thee, kind sire, delve ye into the etymology of thee worde.

Bubba Switzler:

This is, of course, a traditional concept of prayer, one that preceeds Christianity and Judaism;

Ignatius:

You need to do a little scholarship my friend. The Christianity is 2000 years old and Judaism is at least 4000 years old. The modern English language developed less than 600 years ago

Obviously I was referring to the activity and practice of prayer, not to the English word “prayer”. The former is older than the Bible, both the King James version and the Hebrew Torah.

Actually if you look at your response to my initial post(see quote above) it is clear that activity andpractice of prayer is not even mentioned and is, therefore not what we were discussing.

I said “Actually, to pray means simply to petition or ask. I pray thee, kind sire, delve ye into the etymology of thee worde.”
To which you replied: “This is, of course … precedes Christianity and Judaism”.

So, how is that “obviously referring to activity and practices of prayer”? In the above conversation, it is not obvious at all. Quite the contrary, previous practices weren’t even part of the conversation.

You should remember when posting here, that your posts remain and so you are going to have to try to be consistent. You can’t convolute the conversation the way you may do in verbal conversations.

Think of it as having a permanent recording of whatever you’ve said.

Because a) the subject of this thread is prayer, not “prayer”, and b) the discussion has been about the activity and practice of prayer.

Neither a) nor b) shows how it is obvious; in fact, if you look at your response to my initial post(see quote above) it is quite clear that activity and practice of prayer is not even mentioned in our conversation, much less obvious.

Remember what I said before, there is a permanent recording of whatever you’ve written and folks will go back and check it.

Unless, of course, you feel that you are much too clever for the folks here to see.

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

The important thing to understand is that I am only having one conversation with God, and it is taking my entire life to have it. I don’t go into prayer thinking that God is going to reply to each sentence. Rather, God is going to reply to the whole prayer, maybe directly afterwards, or maybe three days from now, or even a year from now - maybe in a way that I can see or hear, or else maybe “behind the scenes” and I don’t notice until much later that He has done so.

I can see your point. It is certainly significant. I don’t know that I would characterize that as conversational prayer.

Another way to state the question is to ask whether God chooses differently according to whether or what we pray. That’s always an enigmatic question since God knows all. So maybe the the distinction is meaningless.

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

Yes, perhaps you are right. I don’t usually conceive of it as asking God what I ought to do, though. I do that now and then, but mostly I’m going to do the same old stuff every day, like drive to work, fix dinner, talk with people, etc., and I typically don’t ask God if I should do those things or not. It’s just that I can do those same old things in one of two ways, thoughtfully and connected with God, or not. And that is how you seem very right to me, that in order for me to be thoughtful, this requires his assistance (grace/gift), which even if I am not consciously asking for it, I do desire it and need it. I know the place to draw from the well of life is to talk to Him. I might just pray, “Heavenly Father, you gave us your Son.” Full stop. But I can see how that interaction has petition underneath it. I have approached him because he is God, the source of all. I am aware of that. I think it is fundamental to Christian awareness that we are creatures who are dependent upon God. The last thing we want is to be separated from him, so that is also present in the interaction. “Give us our daily bread. Forgive us.” Those are dependency and wanting to be together/right with him, respectively.

This brings up what might be described as a third possibility, that we simply pray for God’s grace. I’ll have to think about that a little more.

 

[jmcrae]

I can see your point. It is certainly significant. I don’t know that I would characterize that as conversational prayer.

Another way to state the question is to ask whether God chooses differently according to whether or what we pray. That’s always an enigmatic question since God knows all. So maybe the the distinction is meaningless.

I think that when God created the Universe, He took our prayers into account, and so ordered it that when the farmers pray for rain, the rain will come to them at that time, and when a young woman prays for love, her suitor will come to her, and when a mother prays for her child, her child comes to her, etc., so that everything happens the way it was supposed to happen, and in answer to prayer, both at the same time.