My poor friend Phil has borne the brunt of a few of my cynical ramblings these days. I think he gets most of it because not only is he a fellow cynic too... but at heart he carries a deep, abiding hope - and that is like a lighthouse in a storm for me. So, after spewing on him last week, I tried to write him back today to share my little baby-step of hope... here's how it came out:
So I prayed, expectantly, yesterday morning. Or at least hopefully. Or are those two really the same? Anyhow, I don't do that very often. Regardless of what I try to convince myself I believe, in practice I don't usually expect God to show up on a micro level... I secretly figure he's too busy worrying about the starving children in China to worry about me, since I'm already so priviledged in most senses of the word. But I prayed a teeny prayer of expectation. Nothing big - just a little one. I prayed for the grace to cut myself some slack, I prayed for the strength to not have to lean into my cynicism to make it through the day. And I prayed that I'd be interrupted, and be open to it, if God's agenda for my day was a little different than mine.
Long story short, I got all of those things. I opened up for two seconds when I turned back to say hello to someone I didn't honestly have much of a reason to stop and talk to, and found myself in a conversation that I believe was on God's agenda for the day, even though I hadn't even thought of it as a possibility. I think God used both me and a classmate to be Christ to each other, when we really needed it, when I was really just about to walk right by and miss it. The prayer was small, the answer was small. My cynical side would like to write it off as coincidence. Maybe it was. But I needed to know I made the right decision to be here, and that if I fail, God will still be with me (even if I have to spend the rest of my life looking for work on Craigslist). And even though we spoke of none of those things in conversation, for me, the nature and quality of the interruption spoke to all of them.
Anyhow, praying expectantly and feeling that God has heard - and answered - always brings up questions, and I start wondering: does this mean I'm going to start seeing God as some kind of holy vending machine? Ask for something, pull the lever, and wham, God will overnight it to me? Then I went to my Gospels class tonight, and that's exactly what the professor talked about -- given that Jesus is here, and the Kingdom of God is in effect, but we ain't out of the woods yet (temporally speaking), how does the "already but not yet" affect our expectations of God? And how are we to pray in the midst of that tension?
So I figure if a New Testament scholar doesn't know the answer to that question, it's OK if I don't have a clue either.....
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