4th Day of Simbang Gabi 2017

In a small town, there was a meeting at the local church. Their greatest problem was that there had been no rain in their place. The priest invited everyone to pray to the Lord for rain. So, young and old alike prayed to the Lord for rain. At this moment, the priest saw a little girl who brought an open umbrella to the venue. When he asked the girl why she had brought an umbrella there, she replied, “Father, do we not pray to God for rain? It will rain so I bring with me my umbrella.” Then, it indeed rained.

My dear friends, from the said story we can say that prayer is simply defined as a communication with God. It is a communication sent by man to God. God as He is, He hears all our prayers. Yet, God as He is, He can also refuse to hear our prayers (Jeremiah 7:16).  If we try to analyse everything, our prayers to God are answered according to His will. Our prayer does not depend on us thinking that we can change the mind of God. Rather, our prayer depends on God and how He wants us to change. We can understand this when Jesus taught His disciples the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6: 9-13 or/and Luke 11: 2-4) we can observe from the said prayer that before asking God for bread, we are led to dispose ourselves to welcome God’s will first. A similar lesson may be learned by reading the Gospel (Luke 1: 5-25), when an angel appeared to Zechariah. The angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer is heard…” But Zechariah refused to believe that God answered his prayer because for him, it was too late for God to answer His prayer. He said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” Zechariah thought that his prayer depended on him. He wanted it to be answered on the time he wanted an answer from God. But this was not how God worked. God willed to answer his prayer in His own time. Elizabeth, Zechariah’s wife better understood this as she said, “Thus the Lord has done to me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men.” Thus, when we pray we need to submit our will to God. Let God answer our prayers according to how He wills it and when He wills it. This is why it is called prayer because we can never impose our own will on God. Rather, we accept whatever He wills for us because God knows best. Amen.