Pray Tell

Each morning the sun peeks out, stretching his sleepy rays to begin his morning. To mark the beginning of our morning.  And each evening, he sinks his weary head back down into the pillowy horizon to close the curtains of our today.

Now, as you may have experienced, our beloved friend is accustomed to Irish goodbyes and Irish hellos.  

It seems as though the birds, wont to greet him each morning, are unnoted. The sky welcomes the dawn, but does the sun bear in mind his warm welcome? Does he hear our pleas for him to linger as he retires into the moonlight? 

The order of the universe is cold, almost coy. It seems to take no account of the peopled terrain, in which the people are much flimsier than the terrain. Hence, our friend overhead is deaf to our pleas for him to stay.

Now, while I can only speak for myself, I find it unimaginably difficult to utter to God the contents of my heart. It is impossible for me to conceive that He who set the moon and stars in their place could have it in His mind to be mindful of us, in His care to care for us (Psalm 8:4).

Thus, I am still. But such is not a stillness of simplicity. It is stasis of a rather frivolous nature, a sort of listlessness. I care not for He cares not. Perhaps, it is more readily called duplicitousness, for in my air of carelessness, there is smuggled a carefulness to seal it away from Him. Yet, careful as I am to hide from Him my cares, my cares persevere in afflicting me with desires and longings for sunshine, for warmth, for rest, for home.

Yet, what if I was still, differently?  Could it be that I could find true stillness in bearing in my mind my whole mind, without tidying the topsy-turvydom essential to it, and bearing in my heart my whole heart, without pinching back the fractured and broken nature of it, bare before the Lord? Could it be that I need not mask my mind and heart with the dainty words of saints who went before me?  Could it be that these very saints found these words in their nothing on their knees?The answer stands in the cross which adorns each classroom here on campus. He became man and suffered as man, to show us that He minds what we mind, that He cares for our cares. I take it to be the case that He figuratively, for I dare not ascribe passions to Our Lord, became heartbroken with us because He was heartbroken for us.  Hence, I find myself yet needy, but lucky to be needy at His feet, for He cares. Hence, I am bid to bid to Him, broken-in and wearied as I am, because even that sun haughty and high, and indifferent to the choir of birds that serenades him each morning, stood still.  Because He heard Joshua, “the sun stood still, and the moon stopped” (Joshua 10:13).  The haughty and high and supercilious sun, who heeds not the birds, could not but heed Him and “stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for a whole day…[for] the Lord heeded the voice of a man” (Joshua 10:13-14).  Hence, I am bid to pray, because our Lord Who stretched the ornate sky before us is a Lord Who hears.