When people meet, they often begin by praying for difficult things to end and new happy things to begin. We pray for a new job that brings fulfillment, for our families’ wellbeing, or for a sick loved one’s healing. We pray for wars to not break out, for them to end, or for nationalistic victory during a war. Conservative believers in God, no matter their denomination or religion, might pray for a conservative victory, while liberal believers no matter their denomination or religion, might pray for a liberal victory. We all long for God to bend towards our idea of good.
I pray for my loved ones’ wellbeing, and for an end to pain within my family, community, and country. I pray that God would heal my chronically ill mother, as well as my broken family both immediate and extended. I pray that the world protect my queer friends legally and for the world to uplift their lives and voices, that God would heal all people with broken families, as well as bring to an end all abuse within every family and marital structure.
But those prayers don’t appear to be answered. I know I’m not alone; so many people lose faith after an unanswered prayer. I’m not losing faith per se, but sometimes after God doesn’t answer my prayers, rage and sorrow bubble up within me. Why aren’t our prayers answered? Why does this world remain so broken, even after choruses of voices pray and beg God to heal their families, loved ones, or even strangers on the news? People fight and pray for an end to the war in Gaza; so why are they still dropping more bombs and why are children starving?
The sense of, “well we are meant to do something about it which is why God doesn’t intervene” rings somewhat true, until you do everything you can to stop an outcome and people you pray for still keep suffering and dying. Our loved ones still suffer and die from diseases, even when we not only pray for them but take them to doctors in the hopes of their healing. Our families still fracture, abuse still happens, unemployment continues, violent hatred of queer people, immigrants, and people of color only appears to be on the rise, and children, born and yes unborn, still take the brunt of the violence and brokenness of adults.
The only thing I can bring myself to do, and I’m willing to bet many of you do as well, is to ask why. Why is this brokenness still allowed? Is God there, listening to our prayers? What if the deists are right and God has left us entirely alone? Is there any hope, any whatsoever, that we can one day defeat the brokenness, horror, and trauma within our world?
I pray that Jesus may be present with us and love us all. One of my more gut wrenching theological questions asks, “where does evil come from?” The devil? Us? … God? Why does God allow evil? In the dark of night, I ask myself with fear, is it just allowed? What if God is somehow more active in all this? … Is God Good? It’s the problem of evil, of course. Something no theologian, no matter how much wrestling, has ever been able to fully satisfy. We groan and we cry and we die inside and we die outside, with the weight of everything that happens, of crying out to God and hearing nothing back.
It takes everything within me to have faith that God is Good, and that Jesus walked out of that grave on Easter morning, destroying sin and darkness and giving the whole world Divine ethereal Hope.
As the film Conclave points out, even Jesus cried out, “my God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” Given the visible world around me, faith with certainty may not be possible. Faith, however, real faith in my experience, flows from hope, and hope flows from love. Hope does not, of itself, include certainty. Hope chooses to keep walking, one step at a time, loving and hoping and believing God’s promises all the same.
Jesus also begged God for the chalice of his upcoming suffering, torture, and death: the death of a slave! to be taken away. “Father if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42, NRSVAE). Yet even God’s child, Jesus Himself, went with his prayer unanswered. Perhaps our efforts will pay off in the end. Many days, that Hope is all we have.
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