Teach me how to pray O’Lord. My previous faith is not sufficient for the chaos in my world today. My trust is not enough in the light of a worldwide pandemic, social unrest, and now zero percent contained wildfires. My love seems at one breath overwhelmed with the loss of Your children and their homes and livelihood, then I exhale and seem removed from emotion. O’Lord teach me to fear only You. I swing from fear of many things to complete apathy.
Teach me Great Teacher what wisdom looks like, feels like, sounds like and acts like. Give me sight as our society at large and local get hit wave after wave of heaviness. The very basic comforts and lifestyle our society never thought to cherish are being stolen, broken, and shattered. We have barely seemed to survive the last wave as we struggle to tread water gasping for clean air. Another wave compounded from the previous one pounds us down harder yet. No wave has been like the last as they drowned different aspects of what made up our society: biological, political, emotional, spiritual, and now physical. God we are in need of your guidance in what feels like a new type of chaos and devastating destruction. Nobody seems to know what to say or do at any level of societal hierarchy. Because as far as we all know, from history we’ve been closest to, this is new. We are at the end of our own knowledge, our own history, and our own energy. The houses, the technology we have felt invincible in or with, now are presenting themselves as the sandcastles parading as cornerstones that they’ve always been.
But you are not worried.
Are you God?
No, because we read of Your history with us you’ve given so that we never forget.
In this library of textbooks, history, testimonies, poetry we see pandemics wreak havoc on land, animals, and people. We see massive natural disasters devastate societies. We also see division of people, families, and tribes. We even see the people of God ask for man leadership against His warning, our insisting, then deep polarization splitting nations apart within a single geographical space. Grueling history we never would have said was relatable before. Before we found ourselves amongst the narrative. I wonder where we are now in the narrative?
O’Lord how I repent that we do not remember out of an arrogant self-induced naivety built through years of carefully processed engineered humanity. I repent that we can be so surprised and devastated when you tell us over and over that this place and time is temporary and to set your eyes on the permanent dependency of eternity.
Teach me Father, how it is possible to need so much from you in many different facets. It’s been a while.
Teach me how to pray Father, when I am praying earnestly for our world, in pain over our nation, in desperation for our state, and in agony over individual hearts. All while I’m still praying for small joys, faith for fundraising, fun in my home, and comfort for my friends. Teach me how my heart can hold hurt for the world and joy from a small boy laughing on a couch watching T.V.
Teach me how to pray O’Lord, great teacher, Father. I’ve run out of my own words of wisdom.
Morgan, thank you for putting into words what so many of us are feeling. I find myself speechless amidst the chaos of it all and ONLY having my Faith in God to depend on to get me through. Thank you for sharing your heart. I needed it on this smoke shrouded day.
Thank you for the encouraging words. This was kind of my moment in the midst of those big fires in western Oregon when I decided to defer till now.
I love that you put to words and into perspective that God is indeed our only hope and anchor in these chaotic times we’re living in. You provide a model for others to do the same. 🙂