Letters on Prayer

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. MATTHEW 6:5

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. MATTHEW 6:6

Lewis prayed every day of his Christian life, and he wrote about prayer more often than many readers realise. His last book, finished in the months before he died and published the year after, was devoted to it. Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer is a series of letters to an imaginary friend, an old acquaintance with a wife and a son, with whom Lewis discusses the practice and the puzzles of prayer as two ordinary believers might, over many months. Malcolm never existed, but the questions are real ones, and the book is perhaps the most personal thing Lewis wrote about his own life with God.

The practice

Lewis was refreshingly practical about how to pray. He saw no particular virtue in kneeling if kneeling made the body so uncomfortable that the mind could not attend; he also thought the body ought to have some share in prayer. He did not think the last minutes before sleep were a good time for the main prayers of the day, because a tired mind prays badly; he preferred to pray earlier in the evening. And he was willing to pray anywhere — on a walk, on a bench, on a journey — when a quiet room was not to be had.

Pray without ceasing. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:17

He used both set prayers and his own words, and he thought each was a corrective to the other. Ready-made prayers, especially the old prayers of the church, kept him in touch with sound doctrine and stopped him from praying only about the things that happened to be on his mind. His own words kept his prayers honest and personal. He liked to take the clauses of the Lord’s Prayer one at a time and add to each his own particular thoughts and requests, so that the great prayer became a framework for the smaller ones.

The first prayer

Lewis believed that the hardest thing in prayer is honesty. We come to God as we think we ought to be, with the feelings we think we ought to have, and we present Him with a respectable version of ourselves. But God already knows us completely. The purpose of prayer is not to inform Him but to stop hiding from Him. Lewis thought that the wisest first request in any prayer is simply for honesty on both sides: that we come as we really are, and that we meet God as He really is, rather than an image of Him of our own making.

O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. PSALM 139:1–2

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts. PSALM 139:23

This was the same lesson he had learned so painfully in grief. Our ideas of God are never quite God, and part of every true prayer is the willingness to have them corrected.

Adoration in small things

One of the most helpful things in Letters to Malcolm is Lewis’s account of how ordinary pleasures can become occasions of worship. A cool breeze, the smell of earth after rain, the taste of good bread, the sight of sunlight on a wall — these, he said, need not distract us from God. If we attend to them rightly, each can become a small act of adoration, a moment in which we recognise the giver in the gift. We do not need to wait for great experiences in order to worship. We can begin with the little goods that come to us every hour, and thank the One from whom they come.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. JAMES 1:17

Does prayer change things?

Lewis did not avoid the hard questions. If God knows everything and has already decided what He will do, what is the point of asking Him for anything? Lewis answered, in several essays as well as in Letters to Malcolm, that God has chosen to give His creatures a real share in the running of the world. He lets us cause things by our work, and He lets us cause things by our prayers. When God answers a prayer, it is not that we have changed His mind; it is that He took our prayer into account from the beginning, as part of the way He chose to govern the world. Prayer is not magic, and it is not a technique for controlling God. But neither is it a pious exercise that changes only the person praying. It is one of the means God has appointed for doing what He does.

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. JAMES 5:16

Lewis also admitted a difficulty he could not solve. The New Testament seems to give two patterns of prayer. In one, the believer asks humbly, adding, as the Lord Himself did in Gethsemane, that God’s will be done. In the other, the believer is told to ask with complete confidence that he will receive what he asks. Lewis could not see how to hold both together, and he said so plainly. He offered the problem to others rather than pretending to an answer. It is a mark of his honesty that he left it open.

Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. LUKE 22:42

Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. MARK 11:24

Dry seasons

Lewis was candid about the dullness of much prayer. He confessed that he often found prayer a duty rather than a delight, and that he was glad when it was over. He did not think this was cause for despair. The fact that prayer feels like a burden, he suggested, is a sign of our present condition as fallen creatures. One day, he believed, prayer will be pure delight; for now, it is often hard work, and the faithfulness of doing it anyway is itself pleasing to God.

Weighing it

Letters to Malcolm is a wise, warm and practical book on prayer, and most of it can be received with gratitude. Its honesty, its humility, its delight in God’s gifts and its realism about dryness are all deeply biblical.

Evangelical readers should be aware that the same book contains two of the convictions mentioned in the Introduction. Lewis wrote that he prayed for the dead, and he defended the practice. And he wrote that he believed in purgatory, though not in the form the Reformers had attacked. These views are weighed in chapter seventeen. They do not touch the heart of what he says about prayer, but they are there, and the reader should know it.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Think about when and where you pray. Is there a better time or place that would help you attend to God?

2. This week, pray the Lord’s Prayer slowly, adding your own particular thoughts and requests to each clause.

3. Before you pray, ask God for honesty: to come as you really are, and to meet Him as He really is.

4. Choose one ordinary pleasure each day — food, light, air, music — and turn it into a moment of thanksgiving.

5. If prayer has become dry and dutiful, do not give up. Keep praying, and ask God to make it a joy again in His time.

A PRAYER

Our Father in heaven, You see me as I am. Let me come to You without pretence.

Forgive me for the respectable mask I bring to prayer, and for the false pictures of You I have made.

Thank You for every good gift that comes down from You — the light, the bread, the breath of each morning. Teach me to see You in them and to thank You for them.

When prayer is dry, keep me faithful. When it is a delight, keep me humble. And let Your will be done in me, as it is done in heaven. Amen.