Why do we pray?

I have been in one of those bad spaces in my life lately where things just keep going wrong.

Little things that are just annoying and big things that break my heart all seem to have happened in the last few weeks. Someone I love died unexpectedly and painfully. As doctors fought for his life, we prayed for him. People around us prayed. Then he died. I feel deeply angry and disappointed. This sudden death of a good man seems so meaningless. What could God have been thinking?

There is no simple or easy answer to this question of the mystery of suffering. Instinctively I feel as I presume many people do, that God should protect me and those I love, especially if I ask God to do that. However the reality is that terrible things do happen, irrespective of what we believe or if we pray. So why do I pray? What keeps drawing me back, even when I feel angry with God?

When I was little I was afraid that we were not allowed to be angry with God. Somehow I got muddled and thought that if God was all good then God was a bit like a beautiful but fragile crystal vase- filled with light, but if you bumped it, it would break. I had a bit of a schizophrenic relationship with God; God could do almost anything, except cope with my anger. Then someone suggested I shout at God - they pointed to how in the psalms people shout at God a lot! In great trepidation I did, and no tears happened in the fabric of creation. God coped with my anger - and as I shouted the pain that I had been holding grew a little less.

This week I tried shouting at God again, but something different happened. I became aware of Mary sitting shouting beside me. We were sitting at the foot of the cross and her anger and pain at the death of her son was so apparent to me. I just looked at her, and my heart broke as it breaks when I look the faces of those who mourn my loved one. There is nothing I can do for them, but to sit with them, and in the sitting to know that God sits with me. That God’s compassion is even greater than mine.

Somehow it is a little healing to sit in the pain and know that Jesus has been here before me, that he sits with me and that he understands from his own experience how hard it is. The prayer does not take the reality of pain away, if anything I am even more aware of my pain as I pray. Yet somehow, mysteriously, I feel calmer and stronger when I finish.