Prayer as the source of peace

I would like to outline my considerations on this subject to you by the following three thoughts:

1. Prayer is the vital communication between the eternal God and men

2. Prayer of man to God, the creator and redeemer, is the source of peace that the person praying finds with God and himself

3. Prayer of man to God, the Lord of Lords, is the source of peace among human beings as well as between confessions, religions and cultures

1. Prayer is the vital communication between the eternal God and man

Christians do confess � together with believers of Judaism and Islam � that God, the Eternal, created the whole universe as well as mankind. Doing so the Eternal installed a special relationship among himself and men. He created man to his resemblance. So they are determined to be partners to him. He created them with the ability to communicate which means that man can be addresses by God and is in the way capable of talking to him. God revealed his word and his will to man. The Holy Scriptures are a witness to this. In the Holy Scripture God has revealed to us that he wishes to live in a vital relationship with us human beings and that we shall take responsibility for ourselves, for our human communities and our world. In order to enable mankind to handle this responsibility right, God revealed his commandments to Moses; furthermore he inspired men by his Spirit, and he continues to do so.

Christians prove that the first Covenant between the God of Israel and the people of Israel that has never been dissolved continues to exist. But yet at the time of the Covenant�s installation among God and Abraham the whole choir of all peoples was meant to be taken into consideration. And in fact we do believe that Jesus of Nazareth, being a Jew, opened this exclusive perspective for all peoples and nations. This means that men of all nations are children of the God of Israel by their faith in Jesus Christ.

God is expecting our prayer as an expression of our vital relationship towards him. Christians understand and practice prayer according to the Bible, the psalms and especially to Jesus Christ as the living word of God. He taught his disciples how to pray teaching them the prayer �Our father�.

I want to summarize my understanding of prayer which is related to Jesus Christ the way that he is announced in the gospels by giving you the following three hypotheses:

1.1. The only addressee of my prayer is God, the Eternal and the One and Only. This God became my father through Jesus Christ. Through Jesus Christ God promised his power and his Spirit to me. Within both my personal and liturgical prayer there is no mediator among God and myself, no saints and no ordained clerics.

1.2 My prayer to God, the creator of heaven and earth, always has a dimension which exceeds the exclusive communication of the individual and of all believers. The prayer �Our father�, which has been handed down to Christianity from its Jewish tradition, teaches us to focus on our fellow men and our earth while we are praying. We say �Our father� and not �my� father; we pray that God�s will � this means peace and justice � will be done in the whole universe and not only in our small, personal �private world�; we combine our prayer for forgiveness of our sins with our willingness to forgive our fellow men.

1.3. Prayer as expression of a vital communication with God does not mean to refrain from liturgical prayers and corresponding forms which have been handed down by tradition.

My personal way of praying derives from existing prayers taken from the Holy Scripture, from those of brothers and sisters of faith, from the past and presence and also from sentences elaborated by myself. However some situations of my life require free and spontaneous prayer. Furthermore there is a kind of praying without words, the prayer of the heart, which unites itself with my rhythm of life, with my breathing in and out.

2. Prayer of man to God, the Prayer of man to God, the creator and redeemer, is the source of peace that the person praying finds with God and himself

The prayer to God, the creator and redeemer preserves people from hybris, cynics and resignation. While praying we accept our limitations and our being creatures. While praying we are preserved from idolisation of ourselves, persons or ideas. During prayers to God we can extend our whole life: we can praise and thank, plea and ask, but also quarrel and say our lamentations.

The living God, who installs a vital relationship towards us is also the addressee for our desperation, our non-understanding, our grieves and our rage.

As Jesus, afflicted to the cross, dared to lay down his complete loneliness, also his deeply felt separation from God, into God�s hands, he could in the same way pose his spirit into God� s hands. In this way prayer can preserve us in all our suffering in this world and in our personal experiences of death from despair, cynics and resignation.

Faith and the experience of a listening God though does not necessarily mean that God fulfils all that we pray for. God is really listening to us when we turn to him in prayer for help and protection, but this does not lead to an elimination of suffering, pain and the overwhelming experience of death in our lives.

On February third this year our 22-years-old daughter Meike died of leukaemia. She was lying in my wife Anne�s arms and in my arms, when she passed the soil of death. Our daughters Kathrin and Annika and my wife� sister Elke where also present. We were sad and full of despair. We sang chorals, read psalms and prayed. It was the strengths of prayer that spared us from drowning in sadness and desperation. And even though our non-understanding of God�s ways still remains, our rage did not bring us to an interruption of our relationship to God in prayers.

Because we were convinced: God�s nearness stands tall despite all evil and it is lasting far beyond dying and death. May it be that all our possessions and our whole terrestrial existence shall see death: our soul will be preserved and reach the coming kingdom of God. Here we find peace within ourselves. In this hope we can accept our limitations, our vulnerability and mortality. In this way prayer becomes source and root of peace with God, and thus also with ourselves.

3. Prayer of man to God, the Lord of Lords, is the source of peace among human beings as well as between confessions, religions and cultures

While praying to God, the Lord of all Lords, we open ourselves to the will of God, we give time and room for the effectiveness of the Holy Spirit within us. Prayer does not only open our eyes for our limitations as human beings but also for our resemblance to God, for our human responsibility for God�s creation. This means: God handed over peace, justice and the protection of his creation to us, we are responsible for these goods. The prayer to God as the Lord of Lords frees us from our dependencies from all Lords which behave mighty and powerful towards us. We are brought to the experience of this liberation in order to be able to perceive God�s commandments and value measurements. So prayer leads to thinking over of and to think further the biblical message and it provokes deeds of just persons and of peace. Within prayer God reassures us of his living presence as motivation and encouragement for our plans and actions. In prayer we are like �filled up again� with the power of God and so enabled to act as his ambassadors in our daily life and to do what serves to the protection of life. Once taken into God� s duty this way we are able to meet all men with peaceful intentions in our minds. Deeply rooted within a vital relationship with God we can make steps of peace, even though peace always is and will remain a risk.