Bird by Bird

Sometimes it seems like an overwhelming task to pray.  There is so much going on, that either praying or succumbing to utter despair appear to be our only choices.  Sometimes praying is about the only thing we can do.  Where can we even start?

For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us.  We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on You.  2 Chronicles 20. 12

In Bird by Bird, her classic book about writing, author Anne Lamott shares a story about her younger brother when he was ten, his head bowed down on the kitchen table, near to tears, surrounded by unopened books and blank sheets of paper.   His three-month report on birds was due the next day.  Lamott said he was “immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.”  His father put his arm around his shoulders and encouraged him, “Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird.”

Sometimes it is hard even to begin praying. As with Lamott’s brother, we are immobilized by the hugeness of the task.  What do we pray for first?  What is most urgent? Where do we step in?  How in the world can God intervene in this?

God leads us how to pray as we participate in life itself– right in the midst of the rigors, the routines, even in what we see as mundane tasks.  The simplest words and actions often unfold into the most profound prayers of all.

Ask the wisdom of Brother Lawrence, a French monk in the 1600s, who washed dishes and repaired broken sandals his entire career.  In seeking the Presence of God in his menial and overlooked work, he learned to seize those moments to pray. And how to pray, not by kneeling in a grandiose cathedral but on the dirt floor of the subterranean kitchen of a monastery.  There was never an end of what to pray about.

As for us, we can start with what we do know and pray into it from there.

Just start praying.

All we have to do is get over the threshold, and enter in, one step, one praise, one felt need at a time.  Those few words and moments turn into more, and then even more.  God leads us into the deeper rooms.  One concern is translated into prayer instead of worry.  And then another rises up that He also takes into His hands.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.  Hebrews 4. 16

And sometimes God places point blank in our thoughts while we are participating in the ordinary things of life (which are never so ordinary), a name, a familiar face, an overheard conversation, even a situation next door, or what we see or hear in our comings and goings.  How did that get there?  Pray about that too. And be amazed by His leading.  “I haven’t thought of her in years.”  We may never know why God brought that person to mind, but we can pray.  We don’t always see how the whole story plays out.  But that is not the point.

Prayer is not a reaction to experiencing an angelic lightshow, or gut-wrenching impulses, or even just “feeling like it,” but the daily practice of seeking God. 

In an interview in 1959, author and novelist Flannery O’Connor revealed that she wrote steadily three hours a day, regardless of her mood.  “If I waited for inspiration, I’d still be waiting,” she said.

We too start with being present.  “OK, God, here I am.”  And then we realize His Presence is already here.

We view prayer far too often as a form of contract:  I request.  God answers.  But prayer is not about doing, or asking, or explaining, or crying out for help, but God’s covenantal aligning our hearts with His. 

When we pray, quite suddenly or over the course of the day, God changes us.  We see and respond differently.  Not just to God, but to circumstances and to each other.

How to get started?  Bird by bird.  We start praying, and it spills over into our entire day.

Sit for a silent moment, and listen.  We don’t have to know what happens next.  We just need to respond to God’s nudges.  God is teaching us how to pray. His fundamental law of prayer is embedded deep in the ordinary and the unexpected.

All I do know is that if I listen long enough, and begin to pray, something unexpected – and maybe never even recognized – is bound to happen.  God works that way, far exceeding our imagination or requests, and always way beyond our lifetimes.

Just start praying.

 

Just A Glimpse

 A single page fell out of an old book of mine, a paperback from my college years, the cover collapsing, the glue in the binding dried up. 

The page is not even a complete scene, but still a vital component woven into a larger intricate chronicle.  It is not the whole story.  A page itself does not seem to make sense, but it does in the grand design. 

What is the meaning of this?  We ask because we know there must be.

And because I know this book, I knew where the page belonged.  The story would not be complete without it.

Nor our stories. 

A friend, deep in writing a novel years ago, gave birth to a physically challenged daughter.  Her writing stopped as she cared for her precious child. Twenty years later, seasoned by her experience and relationship with God, she finished her book, now a far deeper story than she had anticipated because of the chapters of life she had not intended, but attended.  God was redeeming already, when she didn’t even realize it.

These incomprehensible circumstances in our lives do not just happen, but unfold.  The incredible, unexpected joys and the unspeakable hard stuff, we know not how they fit, day by day, but we do know Who holds it together.  And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.  Colossians 1. 17

And through prayer, God invites us into His eternal narrative.  Not that we will understand at the moment, but we can trust Him.  And trust Him again.

Prayer gives us just a glimpse.  Not a final answer, nor even a singular one, nor even about “answers” at all, but that which is woven seamlessly together over thousands of years and impacting more people than we can realize.  God places us strategically in time and space and eternity.

Our prayers are inextricably linked, far more than we can comprehend.

When we ask God to do something supernatural, He replies, “That’s the only way I work.”

God does not just say, “Ask Me for that.”  But He changes our hearts to, “Ask Me about that.”  And as we listen, He reveals Himself.  And we discover over time and countless prayers that God cannot be crammed into lidded plastic containers with dated answers that fit so neatly together on a shelf behind the pantry door.

Come to Me. 

The answers are not answers at all, but an ongoing and growing relationship with Him. 

We see but a passage, a page or even two.  But wow, we would be astonished at how our lives and prayers are interwoven since the beginning of time.  It is not a matter of scenes, or events, or details making sense, but bearing witness.

“I am in this,” God says, every word written in indelible ink.  Praying reminds us of His Presence.  We are not alone.  This page of our lives is not lost, but reveals a divinely uniting thread of His sovereign love. 

And not the whole story.  Just a glimpse.

Deep Knee Bends

Regular exercise conditions our bodies to be able to respond to the demands that even everyday life places upon it.  It teaches the muscles how to move differently, it strengthens the tendons and ligaments that hold everything all together, it increases bone strength, all in ways that we cannot see, until the challenges come.

We have been trained and equipped with a new energy, an abiding strength, to be able to respond and not be defeated. Our circumstances may not change, but we have. 

We admire and even honor athletes who bring their best game.  But they are not just naturally good at it. They don’t just excel.  They have worked hard, long hours to get there.  It doesn’t just happen.

I have long admired the many people I have known who respond differently to the struggles and sufferings of life, because of how they pursue God. They come from all different walks of life, all different ages and stages, but one common thread appears.  Their posture in prayer has incrementally increased their strength, long before the struggles appear, step by step, day after day.

Prayer is quite simply learning to pay attention, and not just reacting to the horizontal at eye level, but responding to a vertical dimension that comes only from God, that which the world does not comprehend. There is something deeper here. 

And that would be the deep knee bends of prayer.

Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. (Hebrews 12. 12)

It is not that life becomes suddenly easier, but we know that we are not alone. 

And so, with prayer, faced with serious decisions, the ordinary or the overwhelming, does it even occur to us to pray about it?  Or are we so used to driving in the dark without headlights and wondering why we are having such a hard time, buying into our culture of despair, that we forget or ignore praying about it?  It doesn’t have to be like this.  There is a vertical dimension that the world does not recognize.

We are still walking through impossible situations with enormous degrees of difficulty, and the really hard stuff is still really hard.  But somehow differently now.

A heart stretched by prayer will never see the world or face difficulties in the same way.

We cannot imagine the enormity of God, but now and then, we capture a glimpse by praying.  That which should defeat and stop us in our tracks is like moving from a flat two-dimensional existence to walking into the soaring grandeur of a cathedral that we didn’t even know existed.

“O God, I didn’t realize.”

And He replies, “I didn’t think you did.  I’ve been trying to show you all along.”

Not the possibility of a bigger universe, but the reality of God. 

Trust Me in this.

“Daniel got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously.”  (Daniel 6. 10) 

Daniel was not just prepared for the crisis or the unexpected, but even in the familiar and the ordinary.  Praying was not just a habit to him, but a pattern engraved and treasured in the every days.  To Daniel, prayer was not a have to, but a get to.

Daniel had been conversing with God for a very long time.  Daniel knew his knee exercises had changed the course of his life…..and continued to do so.  No matter the consequences.  And helped him see it all from a different perspective, that which is eternal and lurks beneath the obvious. 

It is not that treasures appear suddenly when we pray, but we can gradually see what is already there.  And that would be God in this.

One of our granddaughters finished yet another novel last night.  She couldn’t wait to tell me about it, as we were getting the grandkids ready for school.  A voracious reader, she told me she was really surprised by it.  Set in medieval times, when the main character, who was an orphaned young man, didn’t know what to do or where to go, he prayed.

She looked me in the eye and said, “I want to be like that.”

It is as if she knows even at this young age, how different her life can be.

Even in this fairly short tale, she recognized prayer not as a 911 call, or the recitation of spiritual words, nor about getting answers, but as a response to what is going on, what is unfolding all around us. 

How can we respond?  On our knees.

Objects in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

When I was a little girl, not yet in kindergarten, my Mom’s cousin told her that my eyes looked similar to his own daughter’s at my age.  She was then grown, wearing Coke-bottle thick lenses. 

I didn’t even realize my vision was inhibited, and apparently each day more so. My mother sought out a pediatric ophthalmologist, at that time a rarity, only one in the entire city of Chicago.  Instead of the doctor just throwing up his hands and concluding, “Well that’s the way it is, she’ll have to live with it,” nor just applying stronger and stronger lenses, he gave my mom a list of exercises for me to do several times a day. 

One of my earliest memories is following only with my eyes, a little pen flashlight held by my mom, without turning my head. 

These exercises helped to align my focus.  Practicing over and over and over again, they strengthened my lazy eye to see differently.

We didn’t observe those exercises doing anything for a long time.  And then we did. 

Practicing the rigors of prayer is like that.  Because praying allows us to see things very differently.  And God reveals Himself.   

Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.”  Genesis 28. 16

My husband enjoys fly-fishing.  He can drive by a river and see fish rising.  I look and see water.  He has taught me to focus not just on the surface, not just on the bottom where the rocks are, but in the in-between.  And occasionally there, I will see what appears as a slender rock moving.  

I kept trying to align my vision and saw nothing at all.  And then, once when I was waiting for him to call it a day, I walked across a bridge near our truck.  As I looked down on the beautiful river, I said almost out loud to myself, “Oh, look how those rocks are all in a row.”

And then I saw the flicker of a tail.

And I realized with a start that they were not rocks at all, but a dozen or so enormous trout lined up like planes on the runway at O’Hare.

Praying helps us to focus differently and see differently.  Not just in helping us to know how to approach the hard things, or navigate the storms, or care for others, or live faithfully, but in seeing God.  And He changes everything.  Even our hearts.

In the shadows, we realize God is real.  Praying empowers us to see that.  God helps us to see Him, to know He is here, even in the improbable, impossible, and unfathomable.  “I am with you.”

By praying, we do not just sense His Presence but know Him more in dimensions we could never comprehend any other way.

With our myopic eyes, we miss so much more than objects that appear in the mirror, through the windshield, or the river that runs through it.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.  1 Corinthians 13. 12

For now we see in a mirror dimly. 

But God is so much closer than that.

Be Thou my vision.