Testimony 5
Prayer is the song of submission if sung correctly. But how to sing it? Kayin and Abel seeks to wrestle with how and why and when and if God answers prayers.
Testimony 5:
God does not answer much prayer by the looks of things; in fact, he doesn’t seem to be able to interact in the world except through the human next to you or as you. And even then, even when thousands of people are praying for your brother, even when hundreds are working toward his recovery, even then, your brother will shoot himself on a Malibu hiking path with an illegally purchased gun and become just another mental health statistic.
Did this single traumatic event shatter everything I had thought I had known about God? Did it result in a testimony that no one wants to hear? Hell yeh.
I can testify to God’s complete and total disregard of you. He may or may not have a plan for you. I mean, my personal experience is that god may have a plan for you; it’s just the same kind of plan that he had for the snail under my shoe. My historical awareness tells me something similar. The Israelites were slaves rescued by Moses and eventually led to the promised land, but let’s not forget that they waited over four hundred years for that rescue and that they obtained the promised land through the brutal conquering of other peoples (not that they didn’t have it coming, I hear the Huzzites were real pricks). Obviously, I don’t tell children that, but it’s what my heart is thinking even time I perjure myself and tell someone that whatever college she goes to, God’s got a plan for her. I mean, I suppose it’s not a lie; it’s just we all assume that the God who endured the Holocaust of his chosen people will only have health and happiness in store for us.
To be fair, the likelihood that a being who is beyond time and space is struggling to piece together some plan despite the insubordination of man and angel is slim. A being that incomprehensible is not struggling. So, is he even trying? Jesus. Jesus tells us that there is a way for us that promotes life, that creates restoration, that brings the kingdom of heaven to earth. But what if God is not a storyteller? What if there’s not beginning, middle and end? I mean, we’ve established that there’s no comprehensible beginning, so why do we long for this all to make sense? What if it can’t make sense? What if it doesn’t make sense? How do we—meaning-makers that we are—move forward? And here we are again, walking on ground we know isn’t there but walk we must. Meaning there must be. Must, we say.