When God Doesn't Answer Our Prayers...

In the midst of family hugs and baby kisses...

 

Our week-long visit with our Illinois kin went much too fast!

 

And right in between games of Rummikub and Springtime Grilling...

 

 

 

 

Sacred conversations mingled low and hushed.

 

Grandpa Don, family patriarch, giver of peppermint candies and piggy-back rides, Sunday morning bus runs and fish stories, has been grappling with the hard things.  The questions of faith and prayers and the promises of God...

 

Over quiet morning cups of coffee and afternoon strolls down sterile corridors... the struggles emerged.  This journey thru life weighing heavy.   Diabetes and prostate cancer can ravage a body.  And this man of faith prays hard for healing, for the pain to ease, for comfort...

 

For with God all things are possible... Yes?   He told us to Ask and it shall be Given... True.  We nod.  It is a promise we hold fast...  and yet he shakes his head in defeat... then why has He not answered my prayers?   In a fit of frustration, Don gestures to a body betraying him, tired legs that refuse him the independence of walking free, burning lungs starved for the oxygen whistling thru the infernal plastic tubes and brittle bones aching long into the night.  Why has the God I have served, and believed in and trusted with my very life, turned a deaf ear to my cries?

 

We listen to his heart.

 

Cry deep inside for the pain we know he feels, the loss we feel as he ages before our eyes.

 

And we search the Word for life, for hope... for Grace in the midst of the hurt.

 

We pray.  Yes, even still.  Pray for faith to grow, for answers, for peace...

 

And God is there.  In the most unlikely of places.  In a nursing home, filled with the frail and dying.  A minister dares to speak scripture that made us cringe...

 

"And just as it is appointed for men to die once, and after that

comes the judgement, so Christ, having been offered once to

bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal

with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him."

                                                               ~   Hebrews 9:27-28

 

To speak of death to those staring it in the face?  And yet the minister continued, as if he could read Don's mind... God could easily answer all our prayers.  Prayers for healing, for remission of cancer, for wholeness in the flesh.  And if He did... why, no one would ever die!  For who doesn't pray for healing when they are sick?

 

I blinked at the logic.

 

And something clicked for Don.  A light shone bright.  After the worship service he was different, more content.  His focus had changed.  His faith found solid ground.

 

As Don worked thru the message that day, he admitted that he never really thought about how he would die, never expecting to suffer at such length.  Maybe, he said, I thought I would fall asleep one night, healthy and whole and wake up in heaven, completely skipping the "dying" part. 

 

Sometimes it's hard to accept that God's plan, His journey for us, will at some point take us through the death valley.  He will never turn a deaf ear to our cries and is there every step of the way... longing for our faith to be made whole and complete as we walk at last into eternity.  Complete and whole and more loved than we could ever imagine. 

 

"Now glory be to God, who by his mighty power at work

within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask

or even dream of, infinitely beyond our highest prayers,

desires, thoughts, or hopes."

                                ~Ephesians 3:20

 

Later that afternoon, as we gathered together in a boisterous family circle, Don blessed the fellowship, the food, and encouraged our faith in the Grace of a Mighty God...

 

God delights in answering our prayers...if we only open our hearts and receive.

 

In Grace, Always,

               Jane