As much as I feel I am close to God, He is still mysterious. I have spent my life observing, worshiping, and tracking His patterns, but He and the world He governs, is impossible to predict.
I use prayer as a tool every day but I really have no clue how it works. I plead, recite, and whisper prayers to a personable God - sometimes I get what I want, and sometimes, randomly, I don't. I have spent a lot of time lately thinking about what prayer does NOT do. How sometimes God does not save us. How sometimes God doesn't answer prayers that need a prompt response. Sometimes we pray for something genuinely expecting to get it, and He then baffles us. With all this wondering I have also felt bolstered by prayers- those from my mouth, and those from family and friends. I have felt an unseen net of prayers catch my fall on days that were hard- another effect I can't explain.
A week ago I snapped this picture of Asian prayer flags. The concept behind these colorful ties felt lovely. These scraps represent prayers, hopes, tied onto a rope to be taken, flown away, carried by the winds to the heavens. I love the visual imagery of the flight of these promising, yet uncertain, prayers.
The more I think about it, the more I picture my own prayers taking this same route to deity. I believe all my prayers are heard. I feel like God listens to me. Yet it seems like sometimes my prayers fade, fall straight down, get caught in the roots and rocks, and are stopped short. Some sail on to be granted, sometimes returned in a slightly morphed form.
2 comments:
I've been thinking a lot of prayer, too. My own prayers and the prayers of others that have blessed my life. This is a long quote, but I like it:
“Prayer is the yearning of the spirit. Sincere praying implies that when we ask for any virtue or blessing we should work for the blessing and cultivate the virtue...Why pray for the Kingdom of God to come unless you have in your heart a desire and a willingness to aid in its establishment? Praying for His will to be done and then not trying to live it, gives you a negative answer at once. You would not grant something to a child who showed that attitude towards a request he is making of you. If we pray for the success of some cause or enterprise, manifestly we are in sympathy with it. It is the height of disloyalty to pray for God's will to be done, and then fail to conform our lives to that will.”
– David O. McKay
Pathways to Happiness
I've always thought of prayer as such a huge blessing and gift in my life...even though it's hard to understand how it really works.
Thanks Leisa. I love both the quote and your meaningful thoughts.
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