The psalmist talks about several kinds of prayer. There is the prayer of thanksgiving. There is the prayer of praise. And there is the kind of prayer which stands close to the center of the Christian style of life.

Dick Gregory, the comedian and activist, begins his autobiography with a description of a Christmas Eve when he was a boy. He’d been out shining shoes and otherwise hustling, and as he turned down his street he was overwhelmed to find that his mother had put up a tree and decorated it. The white folks had brought food and gifts, and they all sat down to dinner.

“After dinner I went out the back door and looked at the sky and told God how nobody ever ate like we ate that night; macaroni and cheese and ham and turkey and the old duckling’s cooking in the oven for tomorrow. There’s even whiskey, Momma said, for people who come by. Thanks, God, Momma’s so happy and even the rats and the roaches didn’t come out tonight and the wind isn’t blowing through the cracks.”

His mother called him in at that point. “What’s wrong, Richard? Why you look so strange?” “You wouldn’t understand, Momma.” “I would, Richard. Tell me.” “Well, I came out to pray, Momma, out here so they wouldn’t hear me and laugh at me and call me a sissy.” God’s a good God, isn’t he, Momma?” “Yes, Richard. Richard, do me a favor.” “Sure, Momma.” “Next time you talk to him, ask him to send Daddy home.”

Is that just childish sentimentality? Not the thanksgiving part, anyway. Not the part where you look at the sun coming up, or at the midday or nighttime sky, and you say, I didn’t have a thing to do with it–I didn’t make it, can’t make it go away, can’t make it come again. I receive what I see with my eyes, what I feel on my face–what I feel as I receive the sky inside of me. The macaroni and cheese, the ham and the turkey. . . the sky, I receive them with thanksgiving. Not thanksgiving like the receipting of a bill which I had rendered for something due me; but thanksgiving for an enjoyment, a fulfillment, an enrichment of my living for which I have no claim. It’s just that wonder came in seeing morning–enjoyment came in eating turkey–and I went outside and looked at the sky and said, “Thank you.”

There are people who say that we should be more mature. Turkeys come from farmers who feed them grain. Turkeys come from markets where they are prepared for the table. Turkeys come from money paid to markets, paid again to farmers. But I say that turkeys come from turkeys, and that it is a remarkable bird. There are people who say we should be more mature. The morning sky comes from earth’s turning, the light from a great sun of exploding, fiery gases–and I’ll agree to that. But the thanksgiving evoked in me I cannot pay to exploding, fiery gases. I somehow sense that the sun could not receive my response of thanksgiving for its warmth and light, nor the turkey receive my appreciation for its remarkable qualities.

Prayers of thanksgiving are not the outgrowth of immaturity. It’s not a matter of not knowing how things really work, and of creating a God to compensate for ignorance. There are too many people who in growing amazement at what they are coming to know about how things work, respond with ever fuller thanksgiving to God.

Our prayers are expressions of an understanding of ourselves and of the world–however sophisticated or unsophisticated that understanding may be. To walk out back on Christmas Eve and to look out into the world of night and say, “Thank you, God,” is to make a confession of faith; to perform an act of faith; to say, “I am a creature who receives; a creature made, one who receives life, who receives joy, who receives love. I also create and give joy, give love. Create and destroy, give joy and take it away, give love and take love away. But there is one who gives love without taking it away. It is said this way in the Epistle of James: “Do not be deceived my beloved. Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.”

There is one who gives love without taking it away. And the love he gives is his own Son, the crucified and resurrected Savior and Lord. “Herein is love,” says St. John, “not that we love him, but that he first loved us and gave himself for us.” Is this sentimental and immature, to offer one’s thanksgiving, to step out into the back on Christmas Eve and say to the One who gives love without taking it away, “Thank you.”

Well, it can be nothing but a nice sentiment if we don’t pay the market for the turkey, and have some concern for whether the farmer gets a fair price. It can be if we offer our prayer of thanksgiving and have no concern for whether there are enough turkeys to go around in the world; if we eat and forget that others are not eating and that they are our neighbors.

But I submit that it is of even more concern to take, take, take–and feel that we made the sun to rise, and that we made the turkey, and that we deserve to be loved, deserve joy. We become such bores when we lose the humility born of acknowledging our creaturehood.

How about the second part, the part where Dick Gregory’s mother says, “Richard, will you do me a favor. . . the next time you talk to God, will you ask him to send Daddy home.” Give us this day our daily bread–our breadwinner; give us our man–send him home. And the boy and his mother kneel at the window and pray, and watch, and wait for God to send his Son to their manger, where a bottle of whiskey waits to celebrate his coming, and Momma wears in winter the summer shoes provided by Miz White. Is that just sentimental?

It could be, if we pray instead of looking; pray instead of working; if we pray instead of seeking help from places where help is waiting. But when you say your brother or your sister loves you, and refuse to share with that brother or sister some deep anguish, there’s something very sad occurring--some misunderstanding of the meaning of love, or some distrust of the one who says he or she loves you. Or you say that her love or his love can’t handle it–which may be true. And when you shy away from sharing with God your need for daily bread, for help; when it becomes wrong for you to share your anguish and helplessness as prayer to God, you also say something sad. You say that you don’t understand what the love of God is like; or you say that it is not strong enough to hear you out and share your trouble.

Our petitions as well as our thanksgivings are acts of faith which declare both our trust in the God who gives and the God who cares. What God does about our prayers, and how he can respond without destroying our freedom, I really don’t know. But I do know that prayers of thanksgiving and prayers of need are acts of faith by which we receive our life with humble joy, and declare our trust in the love of God which we see and know in Jesus the Christ.

“I went out the back door and looked at the sky and told God how nobody ever ate like we ate that night. . . Son, when you talk to God again, ask him to send Daddy home.”
Amen