Opus 2024-307: Pointless Prayer

I continue to struggle with some of the non-answers that I feel I’m getting to prayer.  Why did God not heal the young mother who is struggling with cancer?  I don’t have answers to that.  There are many questions like that but I will have to wait for answers and eternity.

Other situation’s I find where there might be no point in praying for people.  Is it going to do any good asking God to heal someone from a condition that they tend to make worse by their behaviors and activities?  Let me give you a silly example.

Let’s say that you have a child who keeps getting bitten by snakes.  I can pray for healing from the bite.  I can pray that the child will no longer be bitten by snakes.  Those are legitimate prayers.  Will God answer those prayers?  Not if the child in question continues with his habit of sticking a hand down into burrows he finds in the ground.  Let me ask you, what happens when you stick your hand down in a hole where a snake lives?  Can you expect God to shield you from such stupidity?

I often wonder if many of our prayers are simply not answered because the people we are praying for refuse to change their behavior.  Usually there is no way to find out so I will err on the safe side.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-306: Deadlines

Farmers live with a hard deadlines, they just don’t know what they are.  There comes a day when the snow falls.  There comes a day when the rain comes unexpectedly.  Those are hard deadlines embraced by mystery.

Being retired moves you into the world of vague deadlines.  The standard deadlines no longer apply.  You don’t have to get to work on time.  You usually don’t really even have to set an alarm.  You can stay up as late as you want.

The lack of technical deadlines does not mean that there are not limitations on what you can, and should do.  It’s called liberty.  Liberty involves responsibility, unlike the concept of freedom.  Dennis Prager makes this point in one of his speeches.  I wish I could quote him accurately, but I can’t, but I will give him a hat tip.  He is basically saying that the American philosophy involves liberty, not freedom, because he assigns duty and responsibility to one and license to the other.

The ultimate deadline, of course is death.  Right behind it is incapacitating illnesses.  A couple of us old fogies were sitting around, doing organ recitals, and in the process we started listing off all the ways that we could drop dead at our age.  You had to be there.  We were having a good time and had a good attitude.  We were full of hope in anticipation, because we believe that God‘s hand is upon us and our nation.  You can joke about things when you’re not really worried.  I guess you can joke about things because you’re worried.  The point is the ultimate deadline is not something we worry about because it is a comma, not a period.  OK, it might be a semicolon, but it’s still not the end of the sentence.  It implies some thing on the other side.

You also have gradual deadlines.  They sneak up on you like the proverbial frog in the water being heated on the stove.  What brings to mind is that my coffee is not as hot as it was when I sat down.  It gradually losers that temperature which holds it above the world around it and approaches entropy.  This is the kind of deadline that is talked about, and that quotation concerns, “There is a tide in the affairs of men...”  There is a perfect time to take the soufflé out of the oven.  There is a perfect time to make a lane change.  There are many events in life that have a perfect time.  We can miss the perfect time and still do OK.  It’s good that life is that way.  But there are still deadlines.

Enjoy the challenge.  Embrace the flexibility.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-305: The Need for Noise

As I was enjoying the peace of the predawn breezes an anomaly suddenly intruded.  It was somebody walking their dog down the street in front of me.  I say anomaly because they were wearing this strange vest flickering in various colors.  It was almost like a police car with the blue and the red and the white and such but these were more pastels, pink, violet, gray.  That was fine.  Dog and human made their way past me, did an about face and started back.  The light intruded, but the quiet was not disturbed.  Even the gentle urging toward the dog to stop sniffing and leaving body fluids was not intrusive.  Then I heard it.

She had her radio on.  Of course it could have been an MP3 player, and iPod, her phone, it could have been anything.  The point is it was a noise that did not fit in with the world as I was seeing it.  Eventually, they went on, and my world returned.

There are many things that disrupt our perfect worlds.  As the saying goes, “This too shall pass”.  So develop some patience.  Of course it’s easier when you’re retired and have the rest of the day to decide what you’re going to do.  Or you have the rest of the day to ignore what your wife has told you you have to do.  Either way.

It always amazes me how some people are afraid of the silence.  My parents used to take long drives, and I would venture to guess that they could go for hours without saying anything.  The presence of the other person was enough.  They enjoyed being with each.  They did not have to talk.  In my marriage it’s just the opposite.  If you’re not talking, it seems to imply you don’t care.  I care.  I don’t want to talk.  Silence does not scare me.

I thrive on being alone with my thoughts, because I am not really alone.  I have memories.  I have so many things that I have put into my mind over the years that I have many unresolved harmonies to mull over.  In addition to that, I have the teaching ability of the Holy Spirit to not only bring things to mind that I forgot about but also, I believe, create new thoughts and take me down new roads.  Many of the tangents I take I think of as the prodding of God, and not just me being bored.

So happy silence.  Enjoy the moment.  I’ll wait.  Quietly.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-304: The Fall of Texas

It’s that time of year. We don’t know if it will last a day or two, or a week or two. We are pretty sure that it won’t last beyond that but right now the evenings are cool, mornings are comfortable and the days seem to be somewhat reasonable.  That’s today.  I can’t guarantee tomorrow.

Welcome to fall in Texas.  I originally called this spring then realized I was six months off.

homo unius libri