Sometimes I think I utilize prayer like I utilize the internet: it’s such a huge resource and I use it for one or two stupid things. I could be learning about that gigantic quasar they found that is so huge it makes my head hurt, but, no, if I’m online, I’m probably on Pinterest looking at pictures of old women surfing on ironing boards.
Dude. I’m pinning that. It’s “So True.”
sigh…
And, nearly every time I pray, I hear myself say, “God be with…”
Why do I pray that? Every time I start to pray that phrase, or hear someone else pray it, I think about how small my faith is, and how little I pay attention. I mean, seriously, an omnipresent God can not *not* be with us. He’s everywhere. And the scriptures record Him saying He would not leave us. Ever.
“If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.” ~Psalm 139:8
But, we still pray “God be with…”, a lot. Like, nearly every single time. I wonder how that makes God feel. I wonder if it hurts Him that I refuse to acknowledge His gifts and His presence when He’s not giving me what I want.
I found her while looking for God on Pinterest.
Of course, we don’t really mean, “Be with us as You have been with us.” Which often feels a lot like sitting on the couch trying to talk to a man (or, uh, to me) when he’s watching a football game: he’s there, but he’s not *there*. You’re nearly certain He hasn’t heard a stinking thing you’ve said.
“It was terrible. The room was filled with conversations we weren’t having.”
-Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Maybe it would be a more honest prayer would if I were yelling, “God, PAY ATTENTION TO ME! Quit sitting there on Your Almighty Hands and fix this!”
Oh my. But that sounds really bad. (Read: childish. But aren’t we supposed to come to Him as children? This is so confusing.) And then, there’s this: that sounds way too honest. Too needy. (But if He already knows my heart, why lie?) It sounds selfish, even when we are asking Him to help someone else in the way we think they need to be helped. Prayer is supposed to be more than just me hauling out a grocery list and begging God for an easier time of it, for myself, and even for those whom I love and care about. Because I hate to see them hurt, and I hate to hurt.
People seem to pray for an end of suffering. We long for the cessation of pain-physical, emotional, spiritual. We hate that one of the major side effects of love is grief. But the truth is, suffering can bring us closer to God. And being close to God is supposed to be spiritually beneficial. Or, so I’ve heard. Your mileage may vary. I know mine did.
Oh my. Again. —> But, God is love (or, to be precise, His Major Descriptor is Love). And love involves both incredible joy and unspeakable suffering. The closer we get to Him, the more we are going to be exposed to the depths of both extremes of His limitless spectrum.
Pin Him on the “Faith” board. Safety first.
I’m over trying to persuade other people that I am A Good Christian. I don’t care about how my faith looks to others anymore. I just want to know God. I hope to grow closer to Him. I want to hear Him laugh and make Him smile, understand His heart. I want to have a two-way conversations with Him. So, in my well-meaning but often fruitless efforts at becoming a more honest believer, I yell at God a lot. Because it’s easier if He’s two-dimensional and safe like that flannel-graph Jesus from my childhood Sunday School classes. I could just pick that fuzzy little God up and make Him be and do whatever I wanted Him to, and just like a Respectable Hobbit, He never caused any problems or went on any adventures. He would behave like a safe little Pinterest pin: lots of potential, filed away for use “later.” Of course, this didn’t fly with Him: He wants to be God. He kicked me in the gut even as I wandered around “doing His will” in my knee length skirts and modest tops leading ladies in prayer during Wednesday night prayer meetings.
The beautiful thing about intercessory prayer is the tangible human concern it shows for one another. A community of faith is invaluable in this way. But this opens the door to the scary thing about prayer: when we really communicate with God, and open ourselves up to Him and learn His heart, when we stop and focus on the needs of others, and speak to God on their behalf, we will often find that His desire is that *we* become the answer to our petition. Prayer is a lot more than a couple of sincere “God be with…’s”; it’s getting your hands dirty, and even scarred, by being the actual physical love of God in someone else’s life. I think this is commonly referred to as “being kind.”
Which I think is probably why He ripped Adam in half in the garden and created Eve, forcing us to need one another. Maybe that is why He chooses to work through people. Because, when we take a minute to stop and feel one another’s sorrow, and bear it with them, we often can experience both of the most piercing experiences of His love at once: deep grief and pure joy.
And then the most awful wonderful thing happens: God becomes very real.