Richard Beck has recently written a series of blog post on intercessory prayer which express well where I've been coming to in terms of seeing prayer as part of creation -more precisely creatio continua and itself an act of participation in continuous/continuing creation. This is very close to my own thoughts about the structure of creation in relation to justice and peace and the place of corporisations. The third post in Beck's series also puts the helpful perspective ... well, see here:
We have to know that, in this life, praying against death will be an experience of failure. You need to know that before going in. And yet, we also need to know that this failure isn't terminal or final, that Christ has defeated death. Eschatologically, God has answered every petition for life and healing with a resounding "Yes!" Easter is God's answer to every petition against death. All prayers against death have been answered in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
I find that very helpful and my mind next goes to praying for /in climate and environmental crises about the things that are going on that makes them crises. Beck goes on to say that prayers this side of the Last Day are a mix of lament and hope. It seems to me that to attempt to pray in climate and ecological crises is to pray, in some way, against death. Only here we don't only think about the death of people but of species, ecosystems, ways of life, biomes, civilisation ... and perhaps the same insight applies. In Christ it is 'Yes, yes' but not necessarily before Resurrection. We will fail in our prayers and our physical efforts (which are also, in their way, prayers) for mitigating climate chaos: people and species and biomes will die. But all in the end is harvest, our work in the Lord is not in vain. Somehow. How does that, will that, look in the now-and-not yet, before the End?
The tension is that we will not bring about the fullness of God's reign, and yet what we do, what we pray, now will be answered 'yes'. And even if it is not yet and not now the act of praying is hope. The act of praying is an act towards discernment whether this petition is for the now or the not-yet End, and if the former, then how are we called to petition with words and/or with deeds.
