James 24:7

During my exploratory foray into the corporate world, I had a boss who would  walk by my desk with some memo or email detailing some difficult Human Resource matter and issue his favorite command: "Deal with this.  Sooner is better than later."

When he did that, I felt my stomach twist into a square knot.   How was I supposed to "deal with it?"  What made for "dealing with it?"  How would I know when I had effectively "dealt with it?"   And what did "sooner rather than later" mean?  

The problem was that I did not trust this boss and these orders always felt like a set up to me.  He seemed to leave himself in the position of setting the standard of what made for "dealing with it" and what "sooner rather than later" meant while purposefully concealing his meaning.

I  learned the hard way that you could never do anything "soon enough" and that you could never do an adequate job of "dealing with it."

Yes...my boss was a sadistic crazy person...bless his heart. (In the South, you can say anything about anyone as long as you follow it with "bless his/her heart."   It cancels out all that stuff Jesus said about speaking ill of others.  Can you imagine Peter raising his hand after Jesus taught them not to call their neighbor "Raca" and asking, "Can we call them Raca if we follow it with 'bless his heart'?"  But I digress....)

Back to my boss....My point is that I came to believe that my boss, through the use of vague language, was more interested in exercising power than he was in resolving issues.  

I thought about that boss this morning as I thought about one of the vaguest expressions we use in prayer.   That phrase is "be with..." 

We have all said it: "Lord, sister J- is sick.  We pray that you 'be with her.'"   I remember as a kid in church hearing us all pray: "God, 'be with' the missionaries in the foreign fields." or  "Lord, 'be with' the sick and the shut-ins." (When I was a kid, I didn't know what a 'shut-in' was but figured it wouldn't hurt for the Lord to 'be with' them.  As an adult, I"ve come to realize that we are pretty adept at making God a 'shut-in.'  But I digress..again...bless my heart.)

What's the problem with asking the Lord to "be with" someone?   From the Lord's side there may be no problem at all.  After all, God knows what the subject of our prayers need before we even ask. 

I think the problem is not the Lord's, the problem is ours.  I think the phrase "be with"- unless it names the form of how we want God to 'be with' others- is vague, lazy, and thoughtless. 

When we ask God to 'be with' someone (and from henceforth I mean that as the extent of our intercession for the other) we usually don't have a clue what we mean.  

Is God not 'with' another until we ask God to 'be with' him or her?

What if God suddenly spoke from the heavens and asked: "And what should I do when I am 'with' them?" 

"Lord, be with the shut-in missionaries in the foreign fields..."

"And what should I do when I am with them?"

"Uhh...whatever they need you to do???"

I think that maybe we say 'be with' these other folks because we haven't given enough thought to their situation; we have not tried to learn about them; we have not taken time to enter into their world and empathetically experience their situations. We haven't asked God to help us see our neighbor as God sees our neighbor.

In other words, we haven't given attention or taken time- we have not laid down our hours- so we say "be with."

Why don't we just pray: "Lord, deal with this.  Sooner is better than later?"

I think the story of the Good Samaritan is instructive on this point.  You know a man went down onto the Jericho road where he fell among thieves and was beaten, robbed and left for dead.

A priest and a Levite passed him by.  (I bet they muttered: "Can't stop Lord.  In a hurry.  Dare not be made unclean.  Be with him.  Deal with it.  By the looks of it, sooner would be better than later.  Bless his heart. Amen")

This outcast Samaritan came along the Jericho road. He saw the battered man.  He stopped.  He attended to him.  He took time with him.  He took responsibility for him.  He took 'ownership' of him and cared for him.

I wonder how our neighbor would be affected and how we would be affected if we prayed like that Samaritan acted.   What if, rather than rushing through our prayer list with a few 'be withs', we took the same sort of time and offered the same quality of attention that the Samaritan did?  How would our prayers, how would our lives and the lives of our neighbors be affected?

Now I know...we sometimes say 'be with' because we don't know what else to say.  If we are praying for a parent who has lost a child and we have not had that experience we certainly do not know what to say. 

However, I think we can imagine.  We can ask.  We can read and research.   And we can offer up even our faulty and inadequate prayers for them trusting that the Spirit will intercede for us since we do not know how to pray.

I would encourage us all to drop "be with" from our prayer vocabularies...at least for a while.  If nothing else, we may find that one of the by-products of our prayers for others is that we are becoming more compassionate and thoughtful ourselves.