ExploreTruth

I prayed for healing, more love, and clearer guidance today.

A part of me wondered if it was worth it.  If anyone really heard me.  If somehow the clinking ceiling fan above my head was a bit too noisy.  But a part of me desperately needed to experience contact.  I needed, and wanted to know that behind my fervently bowed frame, and despite the whispering shadows of a humanistic, agnostic reality, there was more.

Where or what is God anyway?  How does this thing work?

Prayer.  I hear people talk about about it.  But when I listen closely, the sounds remind me of someone claiming to like a famous band or movie, only because in truth, that’s just the popular thing to do.

Well, right now, I can’t tell you that I believe in prayer.  Not if you define belief as a deep and justifiable sort of knowing.  Not some collection of commonly held propositional or doctrinal points of certainty.  But…you know, the sort of knowing that the Bible says, when it refers to “and Adam knew his wife.”

A deep, silent, unshakable knowing.  Intimate.

Or the confident way you look at your child and tell them not to touch the stove, as you glance at the raised strip of burned scarring at the base of your left hand.  You know.

I guess my prayer a hour ago, at sporadic intervals, felt like an Iraq war amputee praying for his leg to grow back.  Or like a 6 year old sobbing and pleading for her daddy to return from a place where the strength of tombstones do not allow.

I mean, to believe someone is actually listening is a revolutionary act. Right?  It’s either crazy, or real.

Maybe I am looking at prayer all wrong…C.S Lewis said this:

In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not. After that the idea that prayer is recommended to us as a sort of infallible gimmick may be dismissed.

Hmmm….How do you feel when you pray?  Or do you even bother?  Thoughts?