Are You Listening God?

The past week I've been witness to the amazing power of prayer. Against all odds, a friend survived a major surgery and is recovering beyond the expectations of all doctors involved. Many people prayed for this individual. I believe it mattered. But it leads me to the obvious question, what about the people for whom prayers were not answered. What about those who despite their most sincere pleas to God didn't make it through or heard news that devastated them and their families. Is God really listening, or is it all just a random act of universal chance.

This brings me to a wonderful reflection from the book Inner Compass by Margaret Silf. She writes,

There was a time when I thought of my prayers as some kind of lottery. I might get lucky on a few of my scratchboard prayers and clock up a few ticks, as if I were checking God off against a shopping list. Big wins were a lot less likely--really only dreams. Some people even keep diaries of the answers they feel they have, or have not, received to their specific prayers.

Today, though, I really question this way of thinking of prayer and the ways in which God responds to it.

Margaret goes on to compare our "deepest desires" to a powerful underground stream. The stream is so deep that we ourselves are not even fully aware of it. This desire comes from God and directed toward him. The problem we face is that we are often distracted from this inner connection. The distractions come from outside ourselves. They are the things that pull us away from God. They are our own selfish wants and desires that may make us feel good in the moment but ultimately will leave us lost and empty.

These are the prayers that often begin, "Please God, if you'll only do this . . . then I will never . . . again." They are the prayers said in desperation and fear. Sometimes we may feel they are answered, and other times not. Ultimately, what becomes our burden is believing that God is like a vending machine receiving our prayers as tokens and feeding back answers like treats. Or we see God as a genie who randomly decides to grant us our wishes.

Margaret goes on,

I discover, when I let my prayer become this deep flow that I can't even name or ever fully know, the amazing truth that God is continuously responding to it, much as the parent of a much loved, much wanted child is continuously aware of the child's fundamental needs. The parent is continuously attending to those needs even though the child is unaware of them, and even when the child expresses "wants" that will not further his or her real interests and may even be damaging.

A strange reversal follows from this discovery. If I believe that God is continuously responding to my deepest desire, then it follows that by observing God's actions in my life and his movement in my heart, I will be able to see more and more clearly what my deepest desires really are. Paradoxical though it may appear, I will become able to hear my prayers by listening to the answers, not the other way around.

Take a look at your life. What are your answered prayers telling you about what you really need?

[Source: Inner Compass by Margaret Silf. Loyola Press. ©1999]