Praying Upward

To pray "upward" sounds redundant, especially if we lift our hands or head. After all God is in heaven, up there, and we pray to him. Truth is most of my praying seems to have a downward focus, especially if it asks for what I want or need. Often my words are directed upward while my mind is grounded in the struggles of life or the wishes and dreams of earthly things.

Reading Psalm 80 today (a psalm of lament) I was struck by the trajectory of Asaph's words. He begins with prayer and a problem. The prayer is that God would hear, the problem is that God seems to have abandoned Israel to its enemies and not to care about its disgrace and despair. Been there? If the psalm ended at verse 7 it would resemble some of our prayers, desperate pleadings and complaints. But the second half of the psalm rebounds, recalling God's faithfulness in the past, his stated purpose for his people and requests for restoration and healing that are alive with hope and joy. 

Praying upward is more that geography or body language. It means that even in the worst of times, we remember who God is, what he has done in our past and we realign our thinking to his. In the process we are untethered from our circumstances and lifted up to the place of his presence.