Can you hear me now?

“Why, O Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me?”

-          Psalm 88:14

Why, O Lord, can I not hear you?

Why, O Lord, do I search for you and find nothing?

Why, O Lord, do you say, “Seek me and you’ll find me,” but not make yourself known?

How can I reach you if I’m not even sure who/ or what it is I’m trying to reach?

How can my prayers be heard if I’m praying them to the oblivion?

These questions have been actual progressions of my thoughts. I have had periods of my life where I felt as if God was cruel, mean, and a tease. I’ve had moments where it feels like God is ignoring me. I’ve even had days where the deafening silence on God’s end spoke far more volumes than actual words. The bottom line and the problem I think most Christians come across is the idea of praying/ conversing with something they can NOT see, and very rarely hear. Many of my friends, and I myself will be the first to agree, say that praying is like having a one way conversation with the wall: there simply is no response. It seems as if we do all the talking and God refuses to answer. These conversations appear lopsided, pointless, and above all else awkward.  I can distinctly remember a specific example in which I’ve had a one way conversation and can testify that it was far from ideal or fun. 10 years ago my Grandma (whom I call Nanny) suffered an unexpected stroke leaving her bedridden in the hospital for days. It also left her partially paralyzed and affected the Broca’s Area of her brain (located in the temporal area of the cerebral cortex) which impaired her ability to speak. A few days after the incident, my mom called me and told me that Nanny was on the phone. She also gently tried to explain to me that my grandma would not be able to respond and that I was to do all of the talking. Let me just tell you that it has been over 10 years and I still cringe thinking about how awkward that 60 second conversation was. I love my grandma, but I think I honestly prayed for my mom to take back the phone so I wouldn’t have to endure the eternal echoes of silence on the other end.

I have experienced, firsthand, the uncomfortable nature of prayer and the pain that corresponds to the feeling of being ignored by God. I have undergone extensive periods where I have literally cried out for God to speak to me, or reveal Himself, and have been slapped by silence. I too have come across chasms of confusion, loss of direction, and bitterness. But, and this is leading to my main reason of writing, I have also experienced revelation, and have also gazed upon the dissipation of my ignorance that dispelled the “cloud cover” that prohibited my connection to God.

Simply put, I believe that main reason we come across this seemingly perpetual silence is because with our prayers hitchhikes a deadly and awful sin, a sin that caused the Israelites to repeatedly stumble and fail, a sin that’s been hiding in the dark corners of our prayers, a sin known as idolatry.

Let me explain myself as I’m sure many of you are thinking that I have surely gone off the deep end. To accuse someone of idolatry is to accuse someone of worshipping an alternative and false God. The accusation of idolatry is a far bigger stick to swing at someone than Teddy Roosevelt’s, and I do not make this claim without reason. When many of us pray, especially those in the infant stages of our walk, we pray by formula or to a “black void”. Many of those that have survived to experience the adolescent stages of our faith have matured from praying to nothing to praying to a certain image of God. ( Now by no means am I advocating that envisioning a mental picture of Heaven, of the Throne, or of God, is flat out wrong or detrimental, but I am advocating that it should only be done if one has built a mountain of faith reinforced by revelation.)

Maybe our prayers aren’t received by God because we are too busy wrapped up in trying to sound proper or too preoccupied with attempting to constrain the wonders of The Lord into a definitive picture.

Maybe our prayers don’t receive responses because we are praying to the wrong God.

Is us praying to an image that was generated by our brains any different than praying to the bronze cows generated by the Israelite’s hands? Is repeating phrases that sound right but mean nothing to us of any significance to God? Do you think God longs for flowery phrases or for our hearts? Do you think we are supposed to pray with our brains or our souls? Do you think we can possibly create an accurate image of the holy Yahweh? I’m going to have to say no. We can’t even agree what Jesus looked like and he physically walked the Earth for 33 years. Therefore how can we dare attempt to envision the Creator of the Universe, who according to the Bible has not been seen by man? The Answer is simple: we can’t. There are only two ways that we could. The first would be that we are imagining His appearance and thus by the very definition of the word are creating our own God. By its fundamental nature this idea is the cornerstone of idolatry. The second would be that God has chosen to reveal himself to us, which is not out of the realm of possibilities considering the Bible is riddled with such stories ( Moses and the burning bush, Elijah and the wind).

I want to apologize in advance if this latest edition seems scatter brained. Forgive me for it is late and I have very pressing issues on my mind. But my point for writing and I pray that this does not get lost in the almost stream of consciousness thought is that God, the true God, is not an image generated by mere man, nor is he one pleased by our structured, fake, robotic pleas. God is the loving, just, and generous author of life, who has given us the wonderful opportunity to reach him and establish a relationship with him via prayer and petition.

So I challenge those of you who are experiencing the same feelings of bitterness, rage, confusion, and isolation that I described earlier to reexamine your prayer life and ponder this question: Who is it your praying to?