Praying Like a Beggar (GH # 31)

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church in Harlech, Wales

In a sermon on prayer this morning, my pastor challenged the congregation to “pray as a beggar.” His biblical text was Psalm 66 (v. 17 “I cried to him with my mouth”), but so many verses from the Psalms would have suited this point as well. Crying out to God beggar-fashion, explained my pastor, is not the same as standing on the street corner with a sign, hoping someone will eventually stop. Instead, it’s putting aside all self-sufficiency and coming to the Lord for everything. “Apart from me,” says Jesus, “you can do nothing” (John 15).

George Herbert’s wonderful poem “Longing,” full of the frustration of unanswered prayer, uses in its second-to-last stanza the metaphor of the beggar. I’ll quote stanzas 11-13 of this 14-stanza poem:

  Lord, didst thou leave thy throne

Not to relieve? How can it be

That thou art grown

Thus hard to me?

Were sin alive, good cause there were

To bear:

  But now both sin is dead,

And all thy promises live and bide;

That wants his head,

These speak and chide,

And in thy bosom pour my tears,

As theirs.

Lord Jesu, hear my heart,

Which hath been broken now so long,

That ev’ry part

Hath got a tongue:

Thy beggars grow: rid them away

To-day. (lines 61-88) 

In this poem, Herbert’s speaker has been crying out to be heard by the Lord, but he has not received (or perceived) a response. He tries various arguments to persuade God to respond. Stanza 11 asks why God would condescend to leave his throne (in the Incarnation) and come down to humanity and yet not relieve human suffering? Herbert follows this argument in stanza 11 with another line of reasoning: if sin were getting in the way of the speaker’s communion with God, then that would be an appropriate cause of God’s not hearing his prayers. Herbert’s reasoning here is modeled after that of the psalmist in Ps 66:18: “If I had cherished iniquity [sin] in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.”

Yet sin is not the problem. Again following the psalmist (66:19 “But truly God has listened”), Herbert reveals in stanza 12 that (a) “sin is dead” and (b) God’s “promises live.” Sin is not gone (it “wants his [its] head,” that is, its way), but God’s promises keep the speaker from completely giving in to sin (“these [the promises] speak and chide” the narrator). Not only that, but God’s promises are pleading to the Lord on behalf of the speaker (“these . . . in thy bosom pour my tears”).

Herbert’s speaker is left with no answers still. He’s a child of God (stanza 10, lines 59-60), he isn’t given over to sin, and he has God’s promises on his side. Approaching God with arguments to persuade him (logos) isn’t working. Time to resume pathos, reminding the Lord about the speaker’s broken heart in stanza 13. Even in the midst of trying to tug on God’s compassion, Herbert slips in one more argument. If God won’t respond through positive appeals, maybe he will through a negative one. The speaker envisions the pieces of his broken heart each having its own tongue, surrounding the King like a bunch of beggars. All you have to do to get rid of these annoyances, the speaker states, is to grant their request. I’m reminded of Jesus’ parable of the persistent widow, who wears the judge down with her repeated requests (Luke 18:1-8). (Many a mother has no doubt been worn down by her children’s requests this way. “Fine! You can have whatever you want. Just stop bothering me.”)

Herbert uses this metaphor of begging in prayer in the poem “Gratefulness” as well, where he is asking God to give him a grateful heart. “See how thy beggar works on thee / by art,” his speaker says (lines 3-4), where “begging” is revealed to be a tactic to move God through “Perpetual knockings at thy door” (13).

While the speaker has not yet received any answers to his requests in Herbert’s poem “Longing,” other poems from Herbert, such as “Praise 2,” reveal the poet’s responses to the Lord having heard his prayers:

Thou hast granted my request,

     Thou hast heard me;

Thou didst note my working breast,

     Thou hast spared me. (lines 5-8)     

Psalm 66 concludes with praise to the God who does answer prayer, in His own time; who forgives sin when we confess (1 Jn 1:9); and who loves his children with an everlasting love: “Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!” (66:20).