Praying Hope-filled Prayers
Engaging an Eschatological Protest in the Face of Despair
“Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”
What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. — John 2:1–11
In his novel, Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry writes:
“After we pray, ‘Thy will be done,’ what else is there to say?”
This simple question from Berry’s character suggests a powerful line of inquiry: If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, why pray at all? Won’t He see His will done regardless? Good questions! However, I believe they share a debilitating flaw: they sweep aside any sense of human agency, the kind reflected in John, chapter two.
You’re familiar with the story. Jesus is invited to a wedding. He’s attending with His mother, Mary, and some disciples. As the festivities continue, His mother tells Jesus that the wine has run out. He replies,
“Woman, why do you involve me?...My hour has not yet come.” (2:4)
There’s ample extant exegesis that seeks to resolve the story’s tension, but it plainly sounds like He’s telling His mother not to involve Him. What’s fascinating then about this entire passage is what’s left unsaid. After Jesus responds as He does, Mary instructs the servants to do whatever her son tells them (2:5).
Wait, what? No dialog? No back-and-forth? How do we get from “My hour has not yet come” to Jesus turning water into wine? Dramatic representations like The Chosen are forced to fill the obvious gap to keep viewers from being thrown off. Clearly, something happens in the silence between v4 and v5. What is it? We can only speculate.
Does Mary pray to the Father, so that Jesus, the Divine Son, hears Him say, “Go for it”? Maybe. Jesus later says in John, chapter five, that He only does and says what He sees and hears from His Father. If that’s true, then the shift from His reluctance to His miraculous transformation of water into wine must surely have involved a Father-Son conversation.
Perhaps Mary hoped that her empathetic intercession on behalf of the newly married couple and their families would move God’s heart. We cannot say with certainty. It may have. Any answers lie within John’s silence. What’s certain is that Her Son did as she hoped, which is prominently displayed in the narrative.
This offers us some encouragement as we pray.
First, we have reason to believe that our petitions matter. We could abandon all hope and embrace the stoicism of Berry’s Mr. Crow. Or we might also overreact and treat prayer as a magical lever, which, when properly wielded, moves God in the direction of our will, however well-intended and misguided.
Neither approach grasps the implications of John 2.
Mary’s kindness and empathy, the love that moved her, is a reflection of God’s own character. He made her and formed her, arguably through a life of prayer, contemplation, and devoted covenant love (Luke 2:19). Her story should motivate us to offer hope-filled requests as we prayerfully immerse ourselves in the perfections of a wholly loving God who promises to listen when we speak (1 John 5:14). Slowly and surely, as we pray for others, our hearts bind ever more confidently to God’s. Even our simplest petitions deeply form us within the mysterious choreography of our requests and God’s responses.
Secondly, God saves the best for last. This is an explicit message in John’s story with its imagery of serving the best wine, not the cheapest, as the feast draws to its conclusion. John teases out this theological subtext in a bit of dialogue between the master of the banquet and the servants who bring him the now-transformed wine to taste (2:10, quoted above). If this is true, then prayer is always a hope-filled protest against the “not yet” of God’s Kingdom, the very best “wine” that will surely arrive in the fullness of time.
There’s no question that God’s will on Earth as in Heaven is our trajectory (Matt. 6:10 with Rev. 1:8, 21:5-6, and 22:13). That is our sure hope. God has told us plainly who we are and where we’re headed. He’s also told us what to do in the meantime (Acts 1:8). So, we bear witness to the Risen Christ, and as we pray, we offer that defiant witness, confronting the Evil One’s waning darkness.
We do not pray to manufacture what God has already declared that He will do. Instead, we pray into His promises with hope-filled faith, reminding ourselves and others that all of them find their “yes” in Jesus and His ultimate triumph. We have this sure hope: that all our prayers will one day roll up into a giant “YES!” And whatever foretaste we have of His Kingdom’s goodness in the meantime is merely a robust appetizer!
This takes patience, explicitly a fruit of the Spirit. As we pray to align ourselves with God’s timeline, we rely on the Spirit’s encouragement. We do so in communion with God, so we might walk in step with Him. As my pastor, Bo Stern Brady, taught recently, “It’s about proximity.” The point was that we experience God’s comfort as we draw near to Him. However, it is also true of the spiritual life in general.
Proximity is also the wellspring of hope-filled prayer.
So, as we pray for ourselves, our loved ones, our churches, and the world, let us faithfully lay a foundation in this manner:
May our spiritual homes be known as houses of hope-filled prayer where more prayer leads to more prayer, so that we do not pray less because we have prayed, but that God leads us deeper into ever more persistent prayer (Luke 18:1 and following; Col. 4:2; 1 Thess 5:16-18)
May the words of Jesus shape our local churches into communities that seek God before all else: that the words of Jesus will yield lasting transformation among our people (Matt 5:4, and 6:33; James 1:22–25)
May we always pray with bold expectations, believing that our petitions matter, and that the Father delights to give good gifts to His children (Heb. 4:16; James 5:16; Matt. 7:11)
May we become people who are marked among our friends, neighbors, and family by an alluring hope, trusting that God saves the best for last and that every promise finds its “Yes” in Christ (Rom. 8:24–25; 2 Cor. 1:20)