Praying through Sighing
Romans 8:26-39 and Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
How many of you have been accused of excessive sighing? Apparently I sigh a lot. This was brought to my attention when I was a sophomore in college by my roommate who alerted me to that fact about me. Nan caught me sighing the other day and teased me in a nice sort of way.
If you like me sigh – when are you likely to sigh? (are you baffled, frustrated, confused, disgruntled, sad?).
And do you know the purpose of sighing? First of all, there is a physiological reason. So let’s establish what a sigh is. A sigh occurs when we take an inhalation, and then on top of that we take another inhalation, and then we exhale. On average we sigh 12 times an hour – so roughly once every 5 minutes. What this does is it re-inflates our 500 million alveoli in our lungs – which are those little air sacs in our lungs that are closest to our bloodstream where carbon dioxide is carried out and oxygen is taken in. Apparently, if we did not sigh, our alveoli would collapse – we need to sigh to keep those air sacs open. According to a study at the University of Leuven, “lungs tend to become stiffer and less efficient with gas exchange” and adding a sigh to the normal pattern then stretches the air sacs and, additionally, it physiologically gives us a sense of relief. We tend to do things because at some basic level it feels good.
Did you know that rats sigh too?
So sighing has a physiological basis – but it is also an auto-response to stress, it subconsciously expresses stress and anxiety to those around us, and is also an emotional reset button for us.
So let us return to our epistle, Paul’s letter to the Romans and particularly that verse “likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
We have had Paul’s Letter to the Romans in small portions throughout the summer and we have arrived at the point where Paul is tackling a really important theological question and spiritual issue – if we are faithful and true to God – why do we suffer? This poor fledgling Christian community in Rome is having a hard time – what can Paul say to them to make them feel encouraged?
And what Paul says to them, and to us, is something very important. He is recognizing that prayer is hard. We struggle with finding the time to pray, the discipline to pray, what to pray, and the whole logic of prayer. What if we pray for something and it does not happen? Can we really believe in Paul’s assurance that “we know that all things work together for those who love God?” Can we really trust that all will be well?
But what Paul is saying in this letter is do not worry about the logic, the content, the way you pray, just pray because the Spirit takes all those things that we don’t know how to say and turns them into a prayer to God. The Spirit takes those feelings, confusions, joys, and sadnesses, and lifts them to God. And what the sighs too deep for words means is that the Spirit gathers up our deep hope – the hope that lies beyond that of which we can speak or feel in the present moment – so that we can be filled with a hope that is literally beyond belief.
And I wonder, if we could take the Spirit’s cue, and we not worry about the time or the place, or the content of our prayers, and instead, begin to sigh. Maybe our prayer time could be a series of sighs? Maybe, make an intentional sigh when you are waiting at a stop light (what could me more natural than that?). Or if you want to be a little more intentional maybe create a list of all those things that fill our hearts with joy, and those things that we are truly worried sick about. And then try out carrying that list around with you, and find someplace and just sit down, call to mind each item on the list and sigh and pause, sigh and pause, sigh and pause – and maybe the sound of the sigh might be different for every person or thing on that list:
- The summer (sigh)
- the people whom we love (sigh)
- that person in my family I am worried about (sigh)
- those people who are annoying me (sigh)
- the state of the world (sigh)
- my child going off to college (sigh – happy or sad or both)
And although sighing for prayer may sound like taking the easy way out –what if, recalling our gospel lesson for this morning, we could think of a sigh as the mustard seed of prayer – that mustard seed that God makes into a great shrub and tree – or the leaven in the bread. What if we could remember that a sigh is just the beginning of prayer – and then we can offer it to God to do with it what God chooses being assured that whatever we give to God is made greater and more magnificent in our so-doing?
0 Comments