prayer

I got to thinking today about prayer. I have been struggling with the idea of why bother. I mean, sometimes I have had prayers answered (I think) and other times God has said wait or even no, but almost every single thing God has answered for me could also be called a coincidence if one did not believe in God. I can’t think of a specific moment or time when God said “ta daa” and provided an unequivocal miracle. And the one thing that I have never wavered on in prayer, that others have prayed for me, and that I have been willing to give up almost every other blessing for, He does not answer. Not with a yes or a no or even a hold on.


Now, to be fair, I find it hard to believe that God understands how I feel or perhaps it would be better to say that I doubt that God cares how I feel. I sometimes feel that He just wants me to be a mindless automaton that just runs programs and is happy happy happy. Which seems hardly likely since God knew my disposition when He chose me. And part of me wonders if it is my fault that God refuses to give me a partner because I don’t really believe that anyone could love me so my prayers are “worthless.”


I began to think about that as I drove home tonight and the sky flickered with lightning all around me threatened to STORM before I could get home and I shot a quick prayer to God for safety and protection as I drove home. And I remembered other prayers that I feel were “answered” when God delivered me safely through some serious weather when I had to make the drive from work.


Did my terrified prayers make a difference to anyone other than me? Did God intervene and grant me safety or did I just carry thought with events that had already been set in motion and my prayers were simply something that made me feel better as what was going to happen was going to happen with no direct intervention from God? If that is all prayer is, then why do we pray to change situations? And if prayer does make a difference, why won’t He answer? And if the problem is me, then it is all hopeless anyway because I don’t know how to think or feel anything but what I do.


Ultimately, I am trying to reconcile my head to my heart. We are told that we are cannon fodder for God’s Will and Kingdom and nothing we want or do really matters unless God has plans for it, and we are told that God loves us individually and personally. Those two things cannot be reconciled in my head (which is why I write this out – to try and understand). God says we are to have joy at all times (and yes I know it’s not talking be happy per sae) but how do you have joy when your heart feels like it has always been broken. When you cry night after night in the darkness alone and no one answers. When people say to you, get up and get over it when I would just rather die that continue to live like this. I have asked everything I know to ask. Send someone, bring someone, change someone, change me, make me not need this anymore, make me not broken and useless anymore. But all I ever hear … is silence. Perhaps God has finely given up on me after all. I don’t blame Him really, I just feel empty and tried. But underneath it all, I still hope. I hope He love me. I hope He has a plan for me. I hope He wants good things for me. I hope I will not have to live this way forever. Otherwise, I would just stop writing and allow my life to fade into the background. Because ultimately, I have to believe that God is worthy of worship and praise despite the brokenness of my heart and life. I have to ask myself the question: If God never answered a single prayer from this point forward in my life until I died, would I still count Him worthy of my praise and worship? If the answer is no, then I don’t worship God, I worship what He could do for me. If the answer is yes, then why can’t I get past this place in my life? I keep circling around the wasteland of my heart unable to enter into the promise until I am trapped in the desert and don’t know how nor have the energy or strength to believe that I will ever see the land of milk and honey. But then that really isn’t a good metaphor because I have never been promised milk and honey, I have never been promised anything at all.

Maybe my path is to wonder lost and alone in the wasteland forever.