PSALM: 17:1 Hear a just cause, O LORD; attend to my cry; give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit.
17:2 From you let my vindication come; let your eyes see the right.
17:3 If you try my heart, if you visit me by night, if you test me, you will find no wickedness in me; my mouth does not transgress.
The Book of the Psalms, though it gives basis to the lyrics of the sung psalms in the famous collection of the Presbyterian Psalter, and also they are the sung psalms in other denominations as well, and notably a lot of psalms were even originally and intentionally written as tuned hymns and songs, the Book of Psalms is still a prayer book, the book of the Tehillim, which literally means praises.
Some of the Psalms are attributed to King David. Whosoever wrote the majority of the Psalms, the book contains a lot of genre, hymns, lamentation, communal prayer, personal prayer, praise and celebration of God as king, thanksgiving, wisdom literature psalms, pilgrimage psalms, liturgical psalm and so on.
Even by singing, they are whole hearted praying poems.
Sometimes we miss a great point regarding prayers. That point is that only the prayer of the righteous is received in Heaven. Often we think that it is God’s duty to hear out all prayers, and it should be his automated duty to grant the requests. All of them are heard, of course, but only the prayers of the righteous people are taken into consideration.
The Book of Exodus said in the chapter 33 that “As Moses used to go into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the LORD spoke with Moses. Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, they all stood and worshiped, each at the entrance to their own tent. The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. ”
A couple of centuries later it happened in Jerusalem that King Hezekiah became fatally ill. The prophet Isaiah went to him and said, "This is what the LORD says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover." Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD and wept bitterly. His prayer was oddly answered to Isaiah who had declared the terminal nature of the king’s illness.
However, before Isaiah had left the middle court, the word of the LORD came to him: "Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people, `This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. (...) I will add fifteen years to your life. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city, Jerusalem, for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.' "
Isaiah went back to the king and told to the servants there that "Prepare a poultice of figs." They did so and applied it to the boil, and the king recovered. Hezekiah had asked Isaiah, "What will be the sign that the LORD will heal me and that I will go up to the temple of the LORD on the third day from now?"
Isaiah answered, "This is the LORD's sign to you that the LORD will do what he has promised: Shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or shall it go back ten steps?" "It is a simple matter for the shadow to go forward ten steps," said Hezekiah. "Rather, have it go back ten steps." Then the prophet Isaiah called upon the LORD, and the LORD made the shadow go back the ten steps on the sun clock of Ahaz.
Although Hezekiah was one of the most God-fearing king among the kings of Judah, almost like a second David, however it should be obvious that the righteousness of the prophet Isaiah was the transmitter of the healing power of God. Also when Sennacherib, the Assyrian king besieged Jerusalem, it was not the valor or wisdom of King Hezekiah which saved the city, but God saved Jerusalem by the actions of his prophet, Isaiah.
Although a big part of the traditional Protestantism says that not a single molecule of salvation is based on the deeds or on the works but on faith, still the effectiveness of faith is based on merits, and merits are based on deeds, on the keeping of the divine commandments by thought, word and deed.
This is actually a divine circle. We pray that God give us Holy Spirit, endurance and perseverance on the divine path, commitment and devotion to keep the commandments, universal understanding and divine contemplation to experience the union with the Holy.
We pray for sanctification and that the increasing holiness in us help us pray better and more effectively. Of course that our prayer can not enforce God to do what we want, however it goes similar, that as when we understand how the universe works, our path becomes smoother in the material world. We can not change the physical laws of the universe, but by the understanding and using of the laws, we are able to create culture and civilization.
When and if we understand how Heaven works, though our prayers will not be able to change the laws of Heaven, our prayers will not be able to change Heaven itself, however our prayers will be able to change this world, if Heaven grants us strength, leverage and connection.
It came to pass that Jesus saw a man who had been blind since birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"Jesus replied:
Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. "
In the ancient mindset, sickness was always a consequence of sin, walking hand in hand.
It was not really a superstitious rumor, but technically God, in the Book of Exodus, promises the people of Israel, that "If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and will do that which is right in his eyes, and will pay attention to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you, which I have put on the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you."
“You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me, (and showing loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”)
Thus often we suffer for the reason of the sins or mistakes our great-great-grandparents committed or made. This for some evokes a cruel image of God, but actually the statement makes sense utterly, since even science talks about genetically inherited diseases and bad choices regarding environment, pollution, biological warfare, economical disasters and so on.
They said that maybe this man sinned and that was why he was blind from birth.
This question logically implies that they believed that the man was able to commit sin before his birth. This may carry the notion that he sinned in his mother’s womb, which is not very likely, or he sinned in the spiritual world, where the souls wait for being born on Earth.
This second choice is not very likely either. It is nowhere written in any tradition that it may happen. The third possibility is that the he sinned in his former life. The possibility of having former lives is not explicitly stated in the Bible, however it has been never denied, moreover in many stories it is hinted. Here we are not going into details, though even Jesus’ answer does not deny any of the possibilities embedded in the question of the disciples.
It would give us a cruel God, who used an innocent man by putting his sufferings on display. Thus Jesus’ answer should have rather meant that folks, does not matter who sinned, the parents or this man in his former life, all that happened were pointing forward to this event, when this man was healed by the power of God.
As it is written in the Gospel of John, chapter 9, the authorities heard what happened and went berserk because it was a Sabbath day when Jesus opened the man’s eyes,
They told the man that “your healer can not be a prophet because he broke the Sabbath.”
The man answered them, "We (all ) know that God doesn't listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God, and does his will, he listens to him.”
May the Holy Spirit help us be true worshipers of God, following Jesus into the depth of holy prayers in order to be empowered by the Spirit to act according to the Divine Will, which is always Charity and Healing, Peace, Blessings, Understanding, Compassion, Providence. May we pray to be empowered for doing good deeds, and by those to have the merits to pray more effectively in order to change the world for the better, according the always growing glory of God, to whom be given Gratitude and Praise, for ever.
AMEN
