At the Root and Not the Fruit

I am constantly amazed at what immature pray-ers often pray for.

The indifferent student sits at his desk the day the test results are being handed back, and suddenly he prays “Lord, don’t let me get a failing grade!”

What does this immature pray-er want from this prayer? That the ink making up the “F” on the paper coming back will suddenly reform from an “F” into an “A” -- while causing the teacher who gave the grade to have a stroke and forget the original grade -- while causing the computer memory where the grade is stored to suddenly flip its bits and change the “F” stored there into an “A”? Is that the kind of answer this immature pray-er wants?

The real secret of prayer is to learn to pray at the root of a thing at not its fruit. If the student knew that this test was going to be hard, he should have prayed weeks before that he be given the ability to study hard for it. In fact, he should have done this for each test he took. In fact, if he knew he was going to take a subject that was hard for him, he should have prayed about whether he should even be taking it. If he had no choice but to take it, he should have been praying, well in advance of the course, that God would help him to discover what he could like about the subject and change his heart over to a love of that subject. This is praying at the roots instead of the fruits.

Praying at the roots allows us to break out of the boxes that time and synchronicity have placed us in. My prayer to be made to like reading the Bible, and my prayer of spiritual formation, are both special cases of this. Imagine the wider implications of this!

If we prayed at the deepest root of what conditions everything we do in our lives - like our likes and dislikes - we will be freed from the bounds of those conditions which stunt and warp our lives. When we pray at the root, we may be granted the grace of having a dislike turned to a like, and vice-versa.

Pray at the roots and not the fruits. By the time things have gotten to fruits, its usually too late. Praying at the roots is how you enter into a rich and fruitful life.