Prayers of Despair

When an artist sends up a despairing prayer, the Great Creator does hear and answer it.

As artists, when human powers fail us, we must turn to the Great Creator for help. We must “surrender” our sense of isolation and despair and open ourselves to the spiritual help we frequently experience as an unexpected inner strength. Julia Cameron Walking in This World Page 244

When we are in the midst of despair we may make a desperate call for help from God—O God help me, we may say, crying out loud in our desperation.

This prayer will be answered immediately and it is important to keep our hearts and souls open so that we can know the peace and assurance of the grace of God’s answer to our prayer.

If we make our prayer—our desperate cry to God for help, and then immediately go back to despair and anxiety about our situation, it is as if we have closed our hearts and souls to God’s inflowing grace; though we have sent up our request to God we have immediately shut up the conduit to receive the answer.

We are partners with God in both the praying of the prayer and in the receiving of the answer. We say the prayer to God; God hears the prayer. God gives the answer; we, with open hearts, minds, and souls, receive the answer.

It is like a circular flow of give and take, request and answer, speaking and hearing. God makes requests of us also. God calls us to a way of life, a way of creativity, a joyful and generous demeanour. When we respond to God’s call to us that is a form of thanksgiving and gives glory to God.

© Judith Lawrence