god

by Jonathan

Last month, Elizabeth and I attended a beautiful service for my uncle, John. The following liturgy is adapted from the prayer at the end of the service.

Moments of deep pain and loss sometimes erase words, leaving us wanting to pray but not knowing how. So perhaps, for someone somewhere, these words could offer a guide or starting place for praying in the dark…

Gracious God, we are thankful that we got to witness a life.
A life created by you,
a life called by you,
a man loved by you and by many others.

Thank you for your mercy and thank you for your compassion.
Thank you that you call us home,
and you remind us of home,
and you woo us home.
And John is home.

You are a merciful God who knows that we are made of dust and you love us because you have made us.

There is no wrong that you cannot make right,
there is no sickness that you cannot heal,
there is no darkness that you cannot shed light on.

We long for the day we will see John again,
and we will see you face to face.

Sometimes it seemed like John saw dimly through a glass, and although sometimes we see very dimly through glass too, we long for the day when we will see you, we will see reality as it is, we will see so clearly and we will love so well and be loved so well.

Thank you for your everlasting arms.
Thank you for your compassionate heart.

Thank you that you do not break a bruised reed or snuff out a smoldering wick.

We are your children and we cast ourselves on your care;
be merciful to us oh God.

Thank you for this time and thank you for the time we shared with a friend, brother, and uncle; a man loved by you.

Praise your name,
now until forever,
in Jesus’ name,
Amen

I sought the Lord about a certain question. I brought it before Him every morning. I laid it before Him day after day. Silence. No answer.

I determined to wait. And pray. And wait. Still nothing.

Then I asked why He wasn’t answering. Why He wasn’t moving. I stayed stuck on that one particular request, circling around it like a hawk.

One Sunday during communion I went forward for the bread and the cup and returned to my seat. In doing so, my body remembered another Sunday communion meditation a few weeks before.

I had made a specific request to God and then forgotten about it. But as I sat with the emblems and looked back over the past few weeks, weeks I had been obsessing over a quite different request, I could see three very definite answers to that Sunday morning prayer.

And I realized that God hadn’t been silent. He’d been working, He’d been speaking – but on a different channel than I’d been listening to. My heart had been tuned to one frequency and one frequency only, but God was transmitting on another one.

And since God is God and I am not, I was the one who needed to adjust my frequency. To listen where He is actually speaking, not get stuck on the wrong channel just because it was the one I wanted to listen to.

I had to turn the dial to a different channel, and then all of a sudden God wasn’t silent. He was speaking. He was reminding me of life-giving verses I had forgotten about, like ‘Seek first the kingdom’ and ‘Do not worry.’ And He was answering that specific Sunday morning request I had made.

They weren’t the answers I was looking for – I still haven’t heard those – but it was the voice of God speaking. I simply had to adjust my dial. Tune my heart. Figure out which frequency God wanted to use to talk to me. And as it turns out, that’s not always the one I want Him to use.

For whatever reason, Jesus doesn’t let me pick the radio stations on the road trip of life. But that doesn’t mean He’s not speaking.