Lent: Prayer

About 12 years ago I was deep in prayer when I realized there was nobody listening.

Sometimes prayer is a transcendental experience so intense that you can reach out and touch the face of God like a child will touch his father's while he's being held. This time I became aware of a vast, black pit beneath me. I was leaning backward over it, and I was about to fall into the void. No one was going to catch me, because there was no one there.

It was at once terrifying and revelatory. I stopped the prayer then, and went on with my day, but just as I have never forgotten those moments of communion that I've felt, I've never forgotten that moment either.

Prayer is probably the quintessential act of faith. Are we communing with the Transcendent,or are we talking to an imaginary friend as part of an elaborate game of pretend?

C.S. Lewis once wrote "I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God. It changes me.”' Is this a profound statement about the purpose of prayer, or is he just describing what happens as an adult processes profound and unexpected grief?

Does it make a difference?

Perhaps God would prefer prayers offered in rock-solid certainty that he is there, that he hears, and that he answers according to his wisdom and his love. My faith is rooted, but it remains faith and not certainty.

That will have to be enough.


Copyright © 2019 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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