On a Wish and a Prayer

In the days when young children were taught rhymes, a prelude to the rote learning process which would come later, the recitation of a rhyme made wishes believable. Belief was helped along by a trope –  “I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight”, or by being pinned to a fetish such as a chicken ‘wish bone’, or the candles on a birthday cake. Later you might learn prayers, usually the Lord’s prayer and, if you were a Catholic, the Hail Mary and how to say the rosary. What is the difference, then, between wishing and praying?

Wishes tend to remain just as they are – wishes, things which we still reach for, left over perhaps from childhood dreams, or from a longing to escape from whatever unpleasant reality might have dominated that phase of our lives, or which darkens the present one. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray he did not respond to their request by saying ‘When you wish to escape from the past, or from the reality of the present, this is how you should go about it’, or ‘when you pray, you should start by blowing out a few candles’. The disciples sensed that what he called prayer was something greater than wishing and that it would endure in a way which dreams and wishes could never endure. 

The kind of prayer that Jesus taught takes us into an altogether different realm of existence. It is not about formulaic ritual, or rote learning, or even of getting into the ‘right frame of mind’. It is about a unique form of friendship initiated in the unflinching faithfulness of a loving God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus taught his disciples to ask the Father for the things they needed, and for their dreams to be realized. The Kingdom for which we are taught to pray in the Lord's prayer is the realisation of our deepest dreams of truth, justice and love. 

Jesus also told his disciples that the more they trusted him, the better they would know the Father. The same is true for us when we allow our wishes to become prayers which are grounded in trust. The more we trust the Son, the better we know the Father and the better we know the Father, the more we realise that our dreams are also his. The disciples were taught to pray in the sure knowledge that they were heard by a father who was quite unlike any earthly father. This is what those of us who have had bad father relationships need to be hearing when it comes to sensing a need for God in our lives.

Even so, those who have had such negative experiences, can find that praying to a father is at first difficult, if not impossible. It may even remain so for much of their lives, because they find it hard to trust a father figure with the things which matter to them for fear of being ridiculed or ignored. The difficulty lies in being vulnerable, vulnerable enough to receive love and to face our own value and goodness in the eyes of God, a value and goodness which is realised in knowing that we are one with his Son. Herein lies the difference between wishing and praying. Wishes are ephemeral, blown out with the flame of a candle. Prayer is a living reality, a relationship with God which involves the whole person and which endures for eternity. 

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