A Primer on Prayer

Psalm 5

Give ear to my words, O Lord;

consider my groaning.

Give attention to the sound of my cry,

my King and my God, for to you do I pray.

O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice;

in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.

—Psalms 5:1-3

As children, when taunted, we shouted in reply: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me." Nothing could be further from the truth. Words wound us deeply and irreparably. 

A case in point is David's reprisal. It wasn’t sticks, or stones, swords, or spears that pierced his heart. It was words. (Odd, isn’t it, that in David's world, in which there was so much physical violence, words could have so much potency.)

By answering his critics David, gives us an answer to ours, and also, unwittingly, a primer on prayer. 

At first, David admits, his anxious cries were nothing more than groans and barely audible sighs. but there was a growing clarity as his groaning developed into disciplined and expectant prayer. (The verb "I prepare [a sacrifice]" is the word David uses in Psalm 23—"You prepare a table before me"—and suggests that David laid out his words in an orderly fashion.)

My prayers, at first, can be nothing more that a bare wish, an anxious reaction, a ragged cry of despair, an anguished groan. "Groans are quick, and full of wings; and all their motions upward be,” George Herbert said. 

God takes it from there: His Spirit reads my aching cries and turns them into proper prayer. He “considers” (makes sense of) my groaning.

My prayer-bird was cold—would not away, 

Although I set it on the edge of the nest. 

Then I bethought me of the story old—

Love-fact or loving fable, thou know'st best—

How, when the children had made sparrows of clay, 

Thou mad'st them birds, with wings to flutter and fold: 

Take, Lord, my prayer in thy hand, and make it pray. 

—George MacDonald

David Roper