Opus 2024-275: Christian Clichés: Prayer Requests

I am questioning the power of prayer today.  Yesterday we received word that the granddaughter of one of our people died of cancer.  She had been fighting a long time.  We have been praying for her a long time.  There have been some good moments and times of hope.  There was a growing sense of sorrow.  First the doctors said there was nothing else they could do.  Then she went on hospice.  We all held our breath during the last trip of the grandparents to see her while she was still coherent.

During the entire time we were paying praying with fervor.  From our point of you, our prayers were not answered.  Obviously, God said, “No”.  We don’t like that or at least I know I don’t like that.

I am trying to find answers.  While my mind wanders it comes to that verse that talks about God sending Jesus in what He called the “fullness of time”.  There were many factors that came together to say that was the moment Jesus would come.  We speculate on those factors, but we will never know if we got them all or if the ones we do have our correct.  Only God knows that.  The point is it was the focus of time.

I don’t know that I find comfort in it, but I find understanding in the fact that they are possibly many different reasons why this young woman, mother of three, happily married, had to die at this point.  I don’t like it, but I accept it.

As usual, my mind went on another tangent, you know “squirrel”.  I was asking myself why did God give His law to Moses instead of presenting it at the very beginning.  He had the kind of communication with Adam where he could have passed it along with that point.  He could  have established what the standards were then.  At that point everyone would be under the law and have a chance to understand it instead of wandering in the moral wilderness of personal opinion.  But He didn’t.  He waited until the “fullness of time” came for the law.

In so many ways God brings things into our lives when it is our personal, “Fullness of time”.  We can’t know when that is.  We might have a clue, but we can’t know.

Have you ever watched a great cook working in the kitchen?  Many of them don’t have any idea where they left the measuring spoon or measuring cup.  They do almost everything by feel.  When you ask them for a recipe, they will talk about a pinch of this and a dash of that.  They know exactly what they mean even though it’s not always the same thing.  They know how much cayenne to put in the chili by feel not by some silly idea like measuring.  They follow some inner law, some inner standard.  And they usually come out right.  I would say always come out right but I’m not there all the time.  By the same token, I can come up with a recipe and measure everything out precisely and no matter what I do, it just comes short of working.

So trust the chef.  He knows the rules.  He wrote the laws of physics.  He created the stars and the gaps in between them.  He made you and me.  He knows what will work for us in regard to eternity, and He sees through the quick fix.

homo unius libri