Some days even the most silver-tongued find it difficult to pray. Stupefying days, like 9/11, when life’s harshness has slapped the words of prayer out of our mouths. Prayerless days because we are in a lightless season. Days when even the usual flood of insipid prayer “suggestions” to God is dammed up and replaced by mute silence because we have come to realize we do not know how to pray—not about this.
Surely Paul knew those days intimately. Romans 8:22 notes a world (both creation and creature) groaning in anticipation of complete redemption. Throughout Acts, we read that Paul himself had a reason to groan. Though he overcame his past, others never did. He was held in suspicion by Jewish Christians and often beaten or persecuted by those whose cause he once championed. Ironically, both Paul and those who persecuted him believed theirs was a faithful response to God. Paul understands what it is like not to know quite how to pray. But he quickly reminds us that the Spirit will pray alongside us. “We do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”
We mirror the groaning of Paul’s time: groaning polluted waters, groaning endangered species, groaning polluted and endangered peoples. We live in a polarized world that needs Pentecost. Nations are fragmented and distant from one another, and even the church is engaged in varying forms of civil war! How can we possibly discern the need or how to pray? But we are not alone; the Spirit of God is praying with us.