The Prayer of Suffering

Suffering is the refining fire of theology. 

When bad things happen, personally or globally, our ideas about God are placed into a crucible and put into a furnace. The greater the pain and the more inexplicable the injustice, the hotter the heat. Some ideas get burned up; some come out more true. Few emerge unchanged. 

When our world is burning, prayer can be a challenge. What should we ask for, and does it make a difference? 

“God does nothing but in answer to prayer,” John Wesley once said. Let’s say he’s right. How does that work, exactly? Why didn’t prayer prevent past tragedies? How much prayer moves God to action? Does the mailbox of heaven have to reach a certain capacity for the Ruler of the Universe to extend a hand of mercy to those who suffer? 

I imagine myself now looking into the eyes of our suffering Savior and asking all these questions. I see his eyes — themselves a refining fire — looking back at me, strong, kind, resolute. I feel my questions melting, morphing into better questions. 

“Our question,” Richard Foster writes, ​“is not ​‘Why is there suffering in the world?’ but ​‘How do I enter into the suffering that is in the world in a way that is redemptive and healing?’ We must ask the question of practice.”

So this week, here are three suggestions for entering into the question of practice and into the practice of prayer:

First, read ​“The Prayer of Suffering” from Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home by Richard Foster. 

Second, listen and pray along with a powerful guided meditation for the situation in Ukraine, led by Nathan Foster. (Feel free to use this individually or with a group.)

Finally, you’re invited to join us for a reflective visual prayer (a.k.a. Visio Divina) for Ukraine and the world in a 20-minute online gathering on Thursday, March 17 at 1pm ET. (Register free here.)

sAs we pray and enter into the suffering of the world, may our theology, our questions, and our hearts come out more true.