Tag Archives: prayer

“Where is God?” question can be asked anywhere, and any time, but it is most often asked in the midst of difficulties since when you are content that you have no pressing sense of a need for God, His presence, or He extracting you from the situation(s).  In fact, being complacent or placid may make the claims of God on your soul seem like a distraction, an interruption in your life. And, indeed, we often congratulation ourselves when we remind ourselves to be grateful and, perhaps, then dip into a self-congratulatory moment of warm, fuzzy feelings toward our Maker. But what about desperate situations, those crushingly difficult times, prolonged periods of overwhelming grief?  When all help comes up empty-handed, and desperation mounts? Don’t you so often feel on the other side of Heaven’s door–and it’s all silent within? Waiting seems to make no difference, but the longer the wait, the louder the silence seems. You wonder, “Did Anyone really care—really?”  Maybe it had seemed so at one time (for some)-but then, how do you interpret that?  That you believe God is leading you in good time, but doesn’t even a whisper to us in our trouble? If you’re in deep grief, though, the danger will not be so much as to cease believing in God—but in believing some strange and twisted things about God. To clarify, think of the phrase we often use as an excuse/explanation for a dumb decision : “I couldn’t think straight.”  It’s an accurate description of how rattled and irrational we can be when we are at our lowest, when we are emotionally stressed, or when we’re perfectly flattened.   At the times we cannot think clearly, we cannot sort out our panic and desperation from our clear thoughts. And, more to the point, in these times, how can we be sure we’re hearing from God in prayer and not our own panicked state?   We cannot: we’re not receptive to clearly hearing from Him until the time is right.   However, God does (eventually) answer us, but He will allow for times of apparent deadness, for us to travel through the emotions of grief, etc.   In this “pocket” of time, however long it is, we can fill with our voice, for God is listening.   At these times, our prayers become a cleansing, a way of emptying ourselves of the violence we feel the world has perpetrated on our souls.  At these times it’s as if we need to first bleach the stains out of our soul’s garment prior to being dipped,  immersed and dyed with the great hues of God’s own voice.  We eventually emerge newly-cleansed in our souls.  Prayer to God is the primary language of the soul, and  is like saying our phonemic alphabet.   Although my prayer may not be deeply profound, it is most necessary — for it is the foundation of all communication with God. And this most necessary communication, prayer, is that which brings us into the mysteries of God which for us still is unexplored territory. – Charity Johnson
“Prayer, in the sense of asking for things, is a small part of it;
confession and penitence are its threshold,
adoration its sanctuary,
the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine.
In it God shows Himself to us.
That he answers prayer is a corollary—not necessarily the most important one—from the revelation.
What He does is learned from what He is.”
– CS Lewis