Thinking in 3’s - Urgent Prayer

“Hear my prayer, O LORD! And let my cry for help come to You. … In the day when I call answer me quickly.” (Psalm 102:1–2 NAS95)

In the beginning of Psalm 102 - a psalm that bears the heading “A Prayer of the Afflicted when he is faint and pours out his complaint before the Lord” - we have three words that describe the psalmist’s appeal to God. I would like to suggest that these three words should shape how we address the Lord for help as well.

“Hear my prayer, O LORD!” The first of our three words is what one would expect - generic prayer. And while this word is commonly used for prayer throughout the Old Testament, it is hardly generic. It is based on the verb for adjudication or arbitration. The pray-er is appealing to an authority to take up his/her case - to intercede for their benefit.

This idea contains an implication that we should not miss - we cannot remedy our situation by ourselves. We can’t change our condition, or the opposition. Only someone outside of ourselves can do that. Jesus mentions the woman who appeals to the judge in Luke 18. But let’s face it. For most of our concerns, we need someone much more powerful than a judge; one much more accessible than one hidden by judicial, bureaucratic processes. And it is the LORD, our covenant God, to whom we make our appeal. 

“Let my cry for help come to You.” This plea is urgent. This prayer is not the mere fulfilling of a duty. It is evocation promoted by provocation. It leaps from one’s lips instinctively, involuntarily. 

Here we need to pause and ask ourselves a question: Have we grown so self-sufficient, surrounded by such a range of helps and supports, that we have lost the instinct to “cry for help” to the Lord? There seems to be more “saying of prayers” than actual praying; more mumbling than crying out; more words with low expectation than cries of desperation. It makes us wonder if we still believe in a potent, powerful God, and if our contemporary prayers resemble much of the atmosphere of the Bible.

“In the day when I call, answer me quickly.” The third word is “call.” We are actually aroused by our helplessness and recognition of something terribly wrong to express a thought, form a word, and give voice to a call. We move from the interiority of feeling sorry for ourselves to the exteriority of calling out - even screaming? - to the Lord. No, I don’t think that our prayers should all be screaming. But then, if we find nothing wrong in us or around us worth screaming about, maybe we have no reason to pray a Biblical prayer.