O Lord Hear My Cry

Everyone is still solidly sleeping–a great unparalleled miracle, the result of children kept up late to learn about Jesus. Three days of VBS down. One more to go. One “baby” who didn't take a nap any of those days and went full throttle into the mob of children and story and snack and games and singing, with nary a glance back. When asked if she is tired she plunks down on the floor and wails, “NOOOOOO. I NOT TIRED.” One child who is going round about for her last time, and feels the stretch and pull of being in something she loves and remembers happily but is suddenly seeing that it's not for her any more. This manifested itself in a little rebellion about the name tag. Does she have to wear it? Can she wear it where no one can see it? Well then she will wear it upside down and backwards. One child who wore a fancy dress last night and apparently answered all the questions, even when it wasn't quite appropriate to do so. Those were mine. Not all of them were, though. Lots and lots of children from the neighborhood. I was cutting endless crosses for the Altar Pasting Box and talked to a little girl about what I was doing and whether she might someday come on a Sunday morning. She likes paper. A Lot. So so so much. She thought she might sometime come.

Many of us, over the past few years, have prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed for things like children to come to VBS. In the middle of your prayer, as you are pleading with God–let them come, please let them come, let them hear and see and be called, let them come–you are always remembering the long periods where they don't come. You arrange and plan and work and then they don't come. You've invited them, you've talked to them about it, you've told them what it was and they said they wanted to come, but then they didn't come. So you turn back to God and ask, why didn't they come? Don't you want them? Don't you want children to hear? And then you get up and do it again. Because while God didn't say anything, right then, to you in your prayer, you know that he calls the lost, that he calls children, that his word has to go out so that some might be saved, and so you do it again.

Prayer, as I've said so often, is a tricky business. James says we ask for stuff but we don't get it because we ask wrongly. We are in sin and selfishness and blindness and so when we are pleading and crying and begging God to give a certain something, he doesn't give it because it's a bad thing, it's not useful, it wouldn't be a help in walking closer towards him. I've come, in my many years of praying, to expect that very little of what I am asking for is going to be given. When the answer is a yes, as it occassionaly is, I am completely shocked. I pray from a place, what shall I call it, of distrust and despair. For example, I spent many days saying to God, recently, about Meriam Ibrahim, for whom I prayed quite a lot as most all of the Christian world was, 'don't you want to save her? Oh God, don't you want to? Can't she be saved by your glory and your power?' Along with other similar words and thoughts. Never once, not for a single second, did I think she would get out of there alive. Upon hearing the news of her release, I did not believe it. I assumed all the news reports were wrong. I didn't even read about it for a long time. God rarely rarely rarely does what I want him to do and my attitude, in prayer, reflects this fact.

The problem is that in God's economy, suffering is good for us where it produces self despair and desperation for God. And in my experience, that is usually a lesson I can always benefit from. I could always use more suffering, because I have so much wickedness and consideration for myself. And in many ways it is good for the church to struggle, to cast the seed widely and have very few begin to walk the narrow way, to see that the world really does hate God, both the world out there and the world close by. Jesus had twelve close followers, all of whom were weak and distrustful and one of whom was a devil. The little child, the night before last, who said, 'I will have the snack and I will play the game and I will sing the song but I will not hear the story,' had it right. The story will be a demand to give up your own soul. Stick with the snack and the game. Don't come close because it will cost you everything. Knowing all this, it surprises me when one or two come, or ten or twenty. It surprises me when God relieves suffering. It shocks me when I ask for something and apparently I didn't ask wrongly. That for once God wanted me to ask and he gave the thing because it was good.

And now, I'm going to go pray about a missing dog and a missing priest and all the Christians in Iraq and the family of that poor general in Afghanistan and the big list of sick children and the ten people I know personally who I long and cry out for to draw close to Jesus, instead of keeping him at a good sensible distance, and that my school year will fall into place and be a good thing, and for a Sunday school teacher for the fall, and for journeying mercies for some people I love, and that Jesus will come swiftly, and put an end to injustice and evil and will be glorified by all people everywhere…plus the children are waking up. Have a lovely Thursday!