...or rather the problem with content-flawed prayers.
The drama never stops around here. Now going to have to cancel my flight and re-book my flight out to Canada (possibly even skipping it entirely) thanks to the fact that my passport requires it to be flown to Sydney twice just to get two labels on my passport. Hopes of seeing my sister dashed just like that.
I've told people that nothing short of divine intervention will get my passport back on time for me to fly off this Saturday. And the responses I get are pretty much the same, you better pray hard that that might happen. All except one guy, who I can always trust to say the right thing, even if it is the hardest thing to hear.
You see, I think that a lot of us tend to default to a certain kind of prayer when things aren't going according to plan. We pray for some divine intervention will occur as if we are the one running the show. Kinda like a director begging the actor who can't seem to get the lines right. Even as seasoned Christians with loads of Bible knowledge, we still pray like this knowing that this is not how prayer works. Often we interchange prayer with begging and those are two completely different things.
The more I think about my situation and how people respond to such annoyances that I have, the more I think about how utter flawed our prayers can be. Back to this friend who layeth down what it actually is, he expressed his disappointment that empatises with me but also said that maybe this is now what God wants you to be (in Canada) at this point in time. Just about everyone will have a knee jerk reaction when you hear something like this, and have a reply like "What? Is trying to visit my sister not what or where God wants me to be??". The younger me would have definitely said that and most certainly scoff at the idea (and at my friend) that God doesn't want me to be with my sister. But after hearing that as we head to work, I didn't flinch and nodded in agreement. It's not a sign of resignation or cowardice, it's a sign of acknowledgement and understanding how things are with God.
There is a real temptation to think that if I can pray hard enough, or rather beg hard enough that something might happen. We all like to be the optimistic person when the going gets tough, which is not in itself a bad thing. And who knows what miracles you can achieve when you believe. The problem is then what happens when the divine intervention that you want doesn't come. Most will get bummed out, wail or even be grumpy. Or worse, let out a sigh of resignation and have that bottled up for years. I am reminded of Jesus when he was arrested at the garden where he knew that he was going to go to the cross and he even prayed for "divine intervention" that he would not need to go through this. But ultimately say not my will but Yours (God) be done. Later on when some soldier's ear got cut off, Jesus mentions that he could have called legions of angels at his disposal. Though that would have made for a more awesome story, but that was not the will of God. Fast forward to the time when he was crucified, others scorned him to show some divine intervention to bring him down from the cross. But that didn't happen either because of the will of God.
I think my prayers have not changed during the whole drama but stayed more or less the same. And I think that is a good thing. You are not thrown around by the chaos of it all but just calmly ask and trust that God knows what he is doing. If you do get what you want, well praise God but if not God is doing something, just not what you were thinking of. Let God be God.
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