Prayer

When you start thinking too deeply about prayer it can pose some difficult questions. If God has the whole of history - past, present and future - laid out in front of him, then the events and happenings of our lives must be mapped out on the master-plan somewhere.

And if life is all mapped out, then there must be a degree of inflexibility should the need arise to ask God to change something (healing, job, relationship, problem etc) unless that is already 'in the system' and marked for change. Imagine God as CEO and occasionally asking 'Gabriel, bring me Mr Birch's file file!'

I quite like C S Lewis' approach in his book 'Letters to Malcolm - Chiefly on Prayer'in which he says this:

'One of the purposes for which God instituted prayer may have been to bear witness that the course of events is not governed like a state but created like a work of art to which every being makes its contribution and (in prayer) a conscious contribution'

Theologically there may be difficulties in this idea, but I like the idea that rather than God's will being rather inflexible as he holds the whole of history in his hands, that what he has created is a work of art which in a sense is always complete and yet continually being contributed toward.

Prayer can work in such a system, as can creativity. It gives a sense and purpose to our lives and our concerns for the world that we might bring to him in prayer.