In one of her sermons, Barbara Brown Taylor tells the story of her granddaughter’s seventh birthday. As her granddaughter, Madeline, watches her candles burn, her family encourages her to make a wish.
Why? Madeline wants to know. Every year she makes a wish and it never comes true, so why keep wishing?
When I first read that story, my first thought was that seven was a very young age to become jaded with the world. Usually that happens around thirteen and peaks sometime around our quarter-life crisis in our mid-twenties. But seven? That’s early.
Taylor’s concern was that her granddaughter’s lack of faith in the power of wishing would turn into a lack of faith in the power of prayer. Because, like wishes, prayers are not always answered in the way we hope.
I can think of many unanswered prayers and wishes in my life. I’ve forgotten more than I can remember, but to the scooter I wanted in sixth grade—I’m still bitter I didn’t get you. And closet door, I’m still angry that no matter how many times I opened you, you didn’t lead to Narnia.
Other prayers were answered—just not in the time frame I would have preferred. It took eleven years for God to answer one of my prayers and during that time, I prayed almost nightly. And I didn’t pray for something I wanted, I prayed for something I needed and when the prayer wasn’t answered right away I kept on praying.
Why?
Because it was a prayer that had to be answered. To live a life where it wasn’t would have been unbearable.
And then I still have prayers I’m waiting on. If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, I’m sure you can name two. Yes, I’m still waiting for the miracle that will fix my air conditioner (I’m going to start living in the bedroom with the portable air and wait for summer to be over) and yes I’m still waiting for the miracle that will send me to seminary fulltime.
These days, I pray so much for fulltime seminary that I sometimes worry my head will explode. It is an agonizing wait. Not being able to fulfill my call in the way I need is like waiting at the airport for a loved one you haven’t seen in a while. You search the crowds. You watch the clock. And then you finally see them and you want desperately to run to them and give them a bone crushing hug, but you’re stopped by security, or by more crowds or by whatever—joy is delayed.
It’s horrible. And I wonder sometimes if God will ever answer my prayer.
But Barbara Brown Taylor says something interesting about whether prayer works. She says that one day she will tell her granddaughter this, “It [prayer] keeps our hearts chasing after God’s heart. It’s how we bother God, and it’s how God bothers us back.”
So here’s what I know—I don’t know when, if ever, I will get to seminary fulltime, but I do know that as long as I keep praying about it, as long as I keep on God about it, then I am headed in the right direction. As long as I am praying, I have my eyes set on the right thing.
