Note: On Fridays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
A woman asked about deliverance prayers at a conference I attended recently. Both speakers looked a bit flummoxed; finally, one of them referred her to the Lord’s Prayer as the best deliverance prayer ever.
I felt a connection with the woman as someone who’s not a psychologist or learned scholar. Aren’t there times you just say to God, “Enough’s enough! I can’t
take anymore!” about what seems to be intolerable suffering or pain or frustration? Sometimes, it ends. Sometimes, it doesn’t. And in those cases, we summon up strength or patience or endurances from inner wells we thought were completely drained or didn’t know existed to begin with.
In today’s Gospel reading from John 7, we see the people of Jerusalem in essence taunting Jesus, and Jesus responding by all but saying he is the Messiah. But his arrest does not come; John tells us Jesus’s hour has not come. And so he soldiers on, just as we must, knowing God remains by our side, even when our deliverance cries appear to be vanishing into the ether.
