I find myself sitting beside the Professor in the Seventh Meeting of The Pilgrim Continues His Way. He asks questions I have asked, and some I am still asking.
If God already knows what we need, why ask? If God’s providence is at work, what difference does prayer make? Can another person’s prayers really help me?
In seminary, I heard it explained that God lives in eternal time while we live in chronological time—chronos, the unfolding of minutes, days, and years. That gives me something to consider, but I still cannot wrap my mind around God’s knowledge and our experience of waiting, asking, and hoping.
The Professor understands that struggle. Earlier in this meeting, he admits that discouragement has led him to abandon interior prayer. When his heart is distracted and darkened, he thinks it would be better to remain silent before God.
The Monk urges him to keep calling upon Christ.
That speaks to me. How often do we withdraw because we feel unworthy, distracted, or disappointed in ourselves? We stumble, and then we hesitate to approach the very One whose mercy we need.
Perhaps the next prayer begins right there: “Lord, here I am, with everything that is unsettled within me.”
Our failures can become occasions to turn toward God again. We can bring our confusion, our weakness, and even our difficulty praying into that relationship.
The conversation then turns to solitary life. The Professor wonders how a hermit can serve his neighbor while living apart from society. The Hermit describes an attentive inner life: examining himself, tending his spiritual growth, and sharing what experience has taught him.
He offers the image of a gardener removing harmful growth so healthier plants can flourish.
I still have questions about the solitary life. Yet I recognize the value of tending the heart. What grows within us affects the people around us. Resentment finds its way into our words. Impatience enters our relationships. Love, humility, and kindness do also.
The Monk develops that connection through an illustration of two students learning together. The struggling student gains understanding and enthusiasm. The more capable student grows through helping him. Their relationship benefits them both.
He carries this understanding into prayer. We can encourage one another toward God. We can hold one another through discouragement. And, in the Monk’s understanding, God’s grace can work through our prayers even when the person we pray for is far away.
This is where I hear the heart of the meeting: our lives are intertwined. Communion with God includes the neighbors we carry in our hearts.
The Professor wonders whether praying for someone else might distract him from attending to God. The Monk invites him to bring that person into God’s presence. Concern for our neighbor belongs within prayer.
I find that deeply meaningful. When I pray for someone, I place my love and concern before God. I ask for help I cannot supply myself. I also become more attentive to that person—to what they may be carrying and how I might respond.
I cannot explain every mystery involved. I do believe God can work through the love that leads us to pray for one another.
Then comes the moment that stays with me. As the Pilgrim and Professor prepare to continue their travels, they ask the others for their prayers.
The Professor who questioned the value of another person’s prayer is now willing to receive it.
I would do what he did. I would pray, and I would ask for prayer. My questions would travel with me, alongside the hope that God’s grace is at work beyond what I understand.
The appendix still lies ahead in this book. For now, this meeting leaves me considering whom I carry in prayer—and whether I am willing to let others carry me.
Whose prayers have helped you through a difficult season? And who comes to mind as someone you might hold in prayer today?
Source: The Pilgrim Continues His Way, Seventh Meeting. Anonymous; translated by Olga Savin. Shambhala, 2001. Discussion of prayer for others, pp. 179–183.
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