Just to Talk

Sometimes, God, I just need to talk.  With someone, with anyone.  Talking is how I best clarify things in my life, how I best deal with problems and figure out ways to handle them.  I like talking to you, but I do wonder often if you hear, if you care.  After all, I'm just me, and there are so many others on the planet.  And it's not that I feel unworthy, or that you'd put me low on your list of priorities, but that it just seems like there has to be some sort of limit to the number of actual messages you can hear, thoughts you can receive.  How much water can go through a gate of a certain size?  The rest of the water backs up in a flood, and only some of the water actually gets through.  I see prayers like that, and I see my talks with you like that.  There are so many others who need so much more than I. . . why would I be high on your list of priorities?

God's reply:

That's a good analogy for a common misperception of the nature of God.  That there's a gate that has to be gotten through in order for a prayer to be heard.  The simple fact is that you might better think of me as a black hole, one that sucks in virtually everything that is sent its way, but in a much more positive way.  And prayer sent my way, and if you understand my nature, then you understand how.

Remember that I am in you.  That fact alone makes it virtually impossible for one of your prayers to miss me.  If you write a letter to a friend and put it into an envelope and mail it without letting your wife read it, then that message can leave your home without her knowing its contents.  But prayers aren't like that.  The prayer is your attempt to figure out just what you need in life and put it into words--as you said yourself, to clarify things.  Even in your attempt to come up with the words of your prayer, I see and understand the turmoil that you're going through, the difficulties that you face, the problems that are causing you stress and pain and sleepless nights.

Part of what makes you feel that I don't hear your prayers is the fact that you don't immediately see results.  You don't see answers, and you think you should.  You've read so many stories of people who need money and who pray for it and then get an unexpected check in the mail for just the amount they need, that when something similar doesn't happen to you, you feel that your prayers haven't been answered.  And since you know that I've promised to answer all prayers, then logic tells you that I never heard your prayer in the first place.  But I have.

If a traveler in the desert prays for relief, the easy answer would be to move that person out of the desert into an oasis.  But that's not how life works, and that's not how I work--the most important thing that person can do is to finish the journey, for it's in the completion of the journey that character is built, that important lessons are learned.  It's in dealing with financial problems that important lessons about character and life are learned, not in being delivered from those problems with lottery winnings or the death of a wealthy relative who has named you in his or her will.

So keep on talking to me, for one of the most important ways that those lessons are learned is in the process of putting into words the needs you have.  Most people, for example, find the lack of money much easier to deal with than the worry for the future that they have because of the lack of money.  Through reflection and prayer, they realize that it's more important that I help them with that worry than that I deliver them from financial problems.  When you seriously consider your problems and the stress in your life, you'll almost always find that the seeds of the resolutions to your problems are within you, and that you can start their growth by recognizing them, honoring them, and nourishing them.  And please keep talking to me because I love to hear from you and of you.  Your prayers will be answered, but not in the ways you want, for I can see ways that will be much more beneficial, even if they're much more difficult.  And they won't be answered according to your timeline, but to mine, for I can see a timeline that you can't yet imagine, for you don't know anything of the elements that need to fall in place for the prayer to be answered--perhaps a certain person will be out of town until next Thursday, and for your prayer to be answered in the best way possible, that person simply must be present.

You, just like everyone else, are doing fine.  You have difficulties, and you do your best to deal with them in healthy and productive ways.  Please keep me in the loop.  I do hear you, always.  And I do love you, always.  And I do answer your prayers, always.