Overhearing a Prayer
“He must become greater; I must become less.”
~ John 3:30 ~
God, where are you?
I ask that question often. Most of the time the question erupts in the middle of the night at two or three in the morning. I try to resituate and settle in bed anew. But my soul demands a purge. And it’s quite pushy about it.
I toss and turn, beg and plead, negotiate and ingest another melatonin, only for my soul to increase the inferno seven times hotter than when I first awoke. The content varies, but the summary remains the same: God, where are you?
Yes, the question does surface in the day, just not as frequent. It’s fascinating how soul-numbing daily tasks can be. The busy-ness anesthetizes my senses, dulling the droning cry for God. I move from meeting to meeting, class to class, sentence to sentence incredibly oblivious to the panicked question that arrests my nights. But there are moments in most days when I can’t avoid the cry completely. Especially if I’m traveling on a plane.
I hate to fly. I even scowl at that sentence because I know it falls woefully short of how much I loathe air travel. Abhor it. Avoid it at all costs. Days before a trip requiring aviation, I struggle to sleep, become irritated and irritable, oftentimes not even knowing why. That is until it dawns on me: my subconscious is issuing a tornado warning, a siren announcing a rapidly approaching, unpredictable death trap. I’m about to travel on a plane.
Turbulence is the worst. I’ve worked so hard to not allow my inner prayers to spontaneously erupt when a cloud-covered speed bump surprises me. “Jesus, help us!” I blurt, and then look around as if to say, “Who said that?”
Deep breathing offers small victories; repeating mantras like “I trust you with everything Jesus” provide fleeting solace. But truthfully, every tactic just band-aids over something that needs a surgery. For the true remedy to my fear of turbulence isn’t faith but smooth air.
And for that, I’m sorry Lord.
And for this.
When the invisible path smooths out, I forget to pray as much and often even forget to say a small “Thank you” even though I was just pleading, begging, and negotiating for you to deliver me. Shamefully, I confess: the smooth air comes and gratitude is replaced with a book, an album, or some other self-serving distraction.
God, where are you?
Lord, sometimes I’m so selfish. Or at least withholding. Or maybe spoiled is a better word. I want what I want; I promise any- and every-thing for it; I receive it; and forget to say thank you?
My dad used to count how many of us would say thank you as we entered a door he was holding open for us. At restaurants, stores, church. We would file in, even at times smiling at him as he held the metal handle, and as the door closed, he’d announce a number, “Four.”
“Four what?”
“Only four of you said, ‘thank you.’”
I’d roll my eyes, annoyed he was keeping score, maybe muttering under my breath something from 1 Corinthians 13 (“I thought love didn’t keep a record of wrongs?”). But the truth is: he was right. Myopic, but still right. A bit pedantic, but correct.
He understood what I still do not: Gratitude in small things guides us to gratitude as a way of life. As a state of being. And this is no small victory, for gratitude is a prerequisite to trust and to truly being alive.
When I’m not grateful, I often forget to seek God. I often fight for myself when I overlook the power of “thank you.” Selfishness consumes, cravings congeal, and contentment cast away into an ocean of self-obsession. When I’m not grateful, I’m less humane and, indeed, less human.
Gratitude is as mysterious and as valuable as love itself, Lord. Maybe even a key ingredient to the recipe of love and all its remedial qualities.
Gratitude placates the complaints of a childhood that didn’t meet our expectations, cleans and covers wounds desperate for healing. Gratitude erodes the bastions that harbor our arguments against our enemies or in favor of our choice political candidate. Gratitude breaks boundaries of racism, classism, and colonialism. Gratitude is an ancient power that fuels unity and staves off stereotypes.
Maybe that’s why we’ve transformed Thanksgiving, a holiday set aside for creating and contemplating gratitude, into a capitalist-consumer-fest appropriately labelled “Black Friday.” Gratitude has simply become an obstacle to overcome; an enemy to conquer in service of the kingdom of me.
God, where are you?
Are you in the approaching sirens of the first responders? Are you caressing the puppy shivering under a covering in the park? Are you in the aroma wafting from the houseless huddled under a bridge searching for community, warmth, and food? Are you in the cries of protesters reddened with rage? Or in the batons of the peacekeepers ready to render violence in the name of civility and safety? Are you in the shadows of birds crisscrossing from one skyscraper to the other? Or in the bending grain on the windy plains, bowing, so it seems, to an unseen presence?
God, where are you?
The cry of “where” assumes an answer to “who.” At times we ask where our enemy is in order to avoid them, bypass them, or erase them. But there’s a different weight to “where” when we know the person is good. Like my kiddos asking, “Where is Nana and Pappy? Are they almost here?” They ask where, longing for here, because they know who.
Maybe there’s an insight there I hadn’t seen until now, Lord. The question of where is a longing for here. Just one less letter, yet an eternity of difference. Because when “where” bleeds into “here” a peace invades that shelters the forlorn, regardless of how ravenous the storm.
Maybe, then, I need to allow the question to mature into a plea, “God, I want you here. Please.”
But that seems too risky. Too vulnerable. Too terrifying. Because what if you’re busy? Or what if you say, “I’ve got some things I need to finish up first.” A delay can hurt as bad as a “No.” At least a no is shrouded in a potentially reasonable explanation. But a delay, a “not now, I’ve got to ______” actually lists the task or event that you’re choosing over me.
And yet, I want my question dispelled by your presence: I want where to lose the letter that begins my last name. I want your holy name, the great I AM, to precede the sacred word here, constructing a small sentence of three words that answers my question and confronts my desperation with presence, your presence, paving the way for gratitude, gratefulness that loneliness is an illusion, that even as I reject myself you never will. You never do. Because that’s who you are.
But God, since, as you know, I’m given to fear, I recede, recoil into a posture of self-protection, blinded by my own self-sufficiency, crying out in the day and the dark, “God, where are you?”
Forgive me, Lord, for forgetting to be grateful, resisting your presence, and filling here with me.
Oh Lord, hear my prayer. Oh Lord, hear my cry. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Thank you very much.
I always wanted to be like my grandmother. That was where God was, in her. When there was something wrong in our family, Mom would call Grandmother and ask for prayers. Even at a young age, when she would say she'd get with her prayer partner across the tracks, the prayers would be answered. Grandma had a direct line to God!
During the day she be singing hymns and thanking God for every little thing. She would go. to bed praying, and rise in the morning praying. She knew where God was in her life. I still want to be like her. However, just like everybody else, this world pulls us away from keeping God here in our lives.