A Fresh Perspective - June 29, 2007

God is no magic genie who grants all our wishes. Nor is God a divine Santa Claus always checking to see who has been naughty or nice. God doesn't answer prayers dependent on how much faith we have or how hard and long we scream and cry. God does, however, meet us where we are.

I remember as a kid, eight or nine years old, desperately crying out to God. Not because my mother or father was seriously ill, but because I lost my ball glove. It was a Wilson A2000. Like today, it was a top quality, high priced glove. At the time it was about the best money could buy. My father worked at the steel mill and my mother was a homemaker, so it was no small thing for them to purchase the glove for me. And I lost it.

I recall sitting on my front porch in tears when I realized it was gone. I prayed and cried and prayed some more. I don't remember the details, where it turned up or how I found it, but I did find it. And do you know what I believed, as a kid who prayed his heart out? I believed that God cared enough to have pity on me. I didn't believe it because I read it somewhere or someone told me about it (I never paid attention in Sunday school); I believed it because I experienced it. Did God really answer my prayer or was it mere happenchance? I don't know, but I know what I experienced at the time, an experience that had a significant impact on my faith.

I don't know how prayer works. I don't know why some prayers are answered and some are not. But I do believe that God accommodates God's self to us in order to show us that he loves us. God is great enough and gracious enough to meet us where we are, without regard to our level of knowledge or understanding, religious beliefs or traditions, or personal holiness. God looks for ways, without being too intrusive or overpowering, to show us he cares.

My prayer was a very selfish prayer. I'm sure God had more important things to deal with, like all the folks suffering from genocide, poverty and deadly diseases run amok. But I believed then and still believe now that God loves us everyone, even when we are selfish and can't see beyond our own pain.

I can't explain the mystery of answered and unanswered prayer. I suspect that there are all kinds of factors involved, some of which we know nothing about. But I am sure of this. God will meet us where we are to reveal to us how much he loves us. And when it comes to prayer, God is ever nudging us along so that our circle of interests and concerns are ever expanding and extending to issues of forgiveness, justice, and mercy, the very issues and concerns that involve God's kingdom on earth. "May your kingdom come, and your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Amen.

Chuck Queen is Senior Pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church, Frankfort (www.ibcfrankfort.com); he welcomes your comments at cqueen@fewpb.net. Look for "A Fresh Perspective" every Friday.