What Am I Really Praying For?

[Guest Donald]

This has bothered me for awhile. I have a family member going on a long journey. I pray for his safe arrival. If he arrives safely, I thank God. If not, I accept it as God's will. Aren't I really begging God that something bad desn't happen; that God wants something bad to happen and only by praying am I keeping this vengeful God from preventing something bad from happening. I know this shouldn't be my attitude, but isn't this what all our prayers for someone's safety really about.
I know I have this all wrong, but I really can't seem to get arounfd this idea.
Thanks

[Laudate_Dominum]

Prayer of petition should be rooted in a humble and loving trust and surrender to God's Loving Providence. Prayer is really for our own good, its not like God needs our prayers for Himself.
If when you pray you think of God as vengeful, wrathful or evil, I would say there is something seriously wrong. God is loving and merciful, in fact God is Love and Goodness Itself. Everything that God wills is an expression of Love.

The Christian life is an ascent to God and participation in His very life, and prayer is the life blood and foundational source of this deep inner communion and transformation. This is easy to see when considering the nature of infused contemplative prayer, but what about prayer of petition? Basically when we pray for others we are presenting our desires and our love to God in trust and surrender, like a child in the arms of a loving father. It is in no way a case in which either we pray for someone "or else". It is more a matter of being members of a community and being called to participate in God's life.

God desires to elevate our will and desires by bringing them into a harmonious relationship (and fulfillment) with His own will. Also the disposition of prayer of petition teaches us virtues such as trust in God and resignation. It is also an exercise of love toward our neighbor as well as faith and hope. By praying for others we become associated with God's providential plan for that person(s) and really participate in His Love. It is the Grace of God leading us that inspires and empowers us to pray in the first place. This is a foretaste of that ultimate communion of love in God that we will experience in heaven. Also prayer of this sort opens you up and makes you explicitly dociles to God's grace thus enabling you to be used by God as a more efficacious channel of Grace for the world. Through this opening and humble confidence in God (of which Our Lady is the model) we become instruments of His grace in ways that we cannot even appreciate in this life.
So certainly we must defer to God's will in all things, since He sees the big picture and truly knows what's best for us, but we still should pray. And it's not that we must pray, as if it is a chore; rather it is a tremendous blessing that God has bestowed efficacy upon our desires when they are in Him, and that He has enabled us through the Grace of His Spirit to be not servants, but friends, and even to be called His sons and daughters!

God bless you.