God is not a banker or a personnel officer. I was reading “Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer” by Ann and Barry Ulanov this morning and found this a fascinating thought and how we can reframe our mindset to see how God answers our prayers. The words in bold are mine; they drew my attention when I was reading the passage.
“The language of primary speech is often the language of grace, especially when its subject matter is the answer to prayer. The reply to our beseechings on those occasions is a flow of gifts, rarely clear as to source and not often a clear and direct response to what we have asked for. That is to say, if we have petitioned for a specific amount of money or support of some precise kind, for a particular purpose in business or love or schoolwork, we do not often get the exact sum in dollars and cents, the precise favor at work, the grade on a school assignment, or the detailed show of affection we have requested. God is not a banker of credit manager, a personnel officer or intermediary in the offices of love. The graces that come in answer to prayer come, as we have indicated, in the form of new energies, freshly stimulated memories, openings of self and the world, agreeable changes in what we thought was our disagreeably fixed nature. We may indeed receive funds, sometimes much more, sometimes much less than we asked for, new jobs for old, promotions, splendid grades, an overwhelming gathering up in love. But prayer is not a cash business; it is the world of grace, which is to say its language is the language of the spirit, and its specifications are very different from what we are accustomed to.
[snip]
Answers to our prayers are always wholenesses, though we may choose out of the eagerness of our hopes or the stress of our needs to see or hear only those parts of the answers that speak directly to what we have been asked for. In that way, we may get our money, our grade, our job, our gesture of love. But we have missed something, maybe what matters most, if we have contented ourselves with the obvious answer to the prayer. We may feel somewhere the increase of energy or the jog to our memory but not associate it with our prayer. We may know in some way that we are not such an emotional simpleton or hoarder of anxieties as we were before, but again not make the connection to our prayers.”
- pages 103-104.
Food for thought.
