There are a lot of just-so type answers to that thing of a question. But our questions, and I might add our answers, come more poorishly from books and the internet than they do from, um…from God in our life specifics. So come with me off into some of my bits and pieces.
I am a Christian and for Christians the standard answer is a quote from the Bible. Except, I grew up in the solar system of American Evangelicalism, a style of Christianity at which I have slowly come to view with some squintiness about the eyes. My life’s decades have seen me before the Bible or thereabouts on a near daily basis so I know the standard answers. Thing is, those were not the ones chalking up behind my wonderings, my “Hmms”, those serious questions which flick me on the ear and run away.
This a.m. before I could rise from bed that serious question had already re-flicked my ear, my psyche for another day. Encouragingly, two answers glowed like mobile phone notifications. They were written directly into my comprehension, onto my mental chalkboard. So much better when the “hmm” becomes an “aha” the “?” an “!”
Let me tell you of the first answer. It arrived formated as a question. “How many times have you been walking around your kitchen, in the dark of a morning with your coffee in hand praying/meditating and an answer to a real world problem ‘popped’ into your mind?” I knew that answer: “A bunch.” Not much extrapolation is needed to go from “A bunch” to “yep, prayer matters” even if some faith is still required. If you want read on but that’s the gist of it.
The more of a backstory
I am not one who can sit still and be at peace. I cannot watch the world go by. I must be in life’s river, not on its banks. The life-rivers in which I swim including programming computers, databases, websites, learning 3D software with an aim to morphing it around the teaching of cataract surgery. I also am heavily caught in the currents of general contracting having fully renovated 1.5 houses, 3 full kitchens and am currently nearing the end of my 8th bathroom renovation. As if this is not enough there are the rushing waters of matters Biblical, how old the universe and humans are, why people won’t get COVID vaccines but expect scientists/doctors to come up with answers acceptable for them (just not the vaccine!), with why Adele-30 is so poignant or what Billie Eilish means with her non-Biblical yet beautiful word-rhythm-and-style, or how is Disney’s Encanto meaningful for the now.
Some specifics
When one is busy about these matters baffling questions arise with some regularity. I have lost count of how many times a novel answer to a computer programming or a house reconstruction problem came to mind in my morning meditations, that prayer compartment of my life. The key word here is novel. The answers that have ‘popped in’ are frequently unique, things I have not considered, new vantage points, not Google (or DuckDuckGo) based. And…they work. “How can God understand computer languages like Visual Basic or HTML or PHP?” I know, I know God is omniscient, right? But my reflex, my mental automatic is that God builds in biology and physics not with the if-then statements of computer programing. Still, it does not feel like God should know those kinds of answers.
So, does prayer even matter? That was the question and the answer that came was a reminder of previous Lane-experiences.
Something Biblical, still ‘faithical’
Ok, here is the first Bible answer. Way off in one of the biographies of Jesus, the one written by John, Jesus told his disciples about the Holy Spirit. Here is one of the things he said in that pre-crucifixion time:
26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. John 14:26–NIV
So, I have had answers to prayer, answers to things important in the trek and tread of my days. The answer was a reminder thereof. Now, I still get to, have to accept that this was God-involved. I can still reject that figuring my molecular, my mental, my own faculties did it. Thing is, with frequency there has been ridiculous temporality between prayer and novel answer. The ask and answer have often been (not always…no God-as-candy-dispenser here) so neatly packaged, so correlated alongside one another it is easier to believe I was given the answer than my subconscious unraveled it just then. Of course here is the faith point. I still get to choose to accept “God told me” or “I told me.” That is an oddity with things like this.
Today, the unraveling came with the unraveling of my night’s six sleeping hours.
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