In his wonderful book, Praying Like Monks, Living like Fools, Tyler Staton reminds us of how God will use two precious and painful companions to renew the world.
“Scripture makes it clear that God collects two things — prayers and tears.
This world in its current form is passing away, but our prayers and tears are eternal.
God collects our prayers. In Revelation, we are offered a glimpse at the receiving end of our prayers: ‘The twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people’.”
But God doesn’t just hold and treasure those prayers. Instead, at the right time, he pours out those prayers onto the world.
“Redemption comes when he rains down those prayers on the earth once and for all. The renewal of the world, heaven and earth restored as one, begins with God pouring out all the prayers of his children like a purifying fire with one great, resounding yes.
Every prayer in the end is an answered prayer.
Some are still awaiting that yes, but it’s coming.”
Now, it’s not just our prayers that God uses, but also something else – for lack of a better word – aquatic?
In the Psalms, David famously notes that God “bottles our tears,” but a less famous moment comes in Psalm 123 when the Psalmist says: “Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.”
Staton notes:
“God is not merely bottling up our tears. He also promises that when they touch the earth, they will bring renewal… The new creation is seeded by the prayers of God’s people and watered by their tears. Both are key ingredients in remaking the world.”
Amen.
It’s a beautiful thing – that God uses these very private things (prayers and tears) to help bring about creation’s redemption.
So we pray alone and we usually cry alone, and God sees the sacred in loneliness, and will someday publicly use all that to turn the world into a place with no more tears and where our prayers are only continual hallelujahs.
I don’t know about you, but loneliness can either be a place of refuge or dread for me, and it’s not always clear whether it will be one or the other.
But we do know that prayers can arise from refuge or terror, and those are probably the prayers that most catch God’s ear because they’re not uttered from, potentially, obligation (a family table) or, potentially, from pride (a fellowship).
Our silent prayers aren’t obligatory or vain, because who would pray from pure obligation or vanity while alone?
So keep praying in silent, alone. God hears you, and he blesses your prayers and tears and promises they’re of greater use than we could ever imagine.
For readers from the United States….
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For salvation, Christ and Christ alone.
