A Prayer That Could Change Everything

To say it’s been a month is an understatement. Four weeks after my mom passed away, I found myself sitting in a tiny enclosed room waiting on test results. Tests scanning for possible tumors. Thankfully, those tests came back negative, something else was the cause of what ailed me that day. Now, I’m facing new medical challenges (nothing life-threatening). But this spring has just been one trial after another. And to be perfectly frank, I wouldn’t trade one single second of any one of those trials. It’s been hard to talk or to write, as I sort through one thing after another. But God is infinitely good and He has brought equally, if not many more, blessings out of each one of those struggles.

I watched a new music video tonight called “Scars in Heaven” by Casting Crowns, and once again, they knocked it out of the park. The line that stays with me right now is this… “the only scars in heaven are on the hands that hold you now.”

I invite you to just sit with that line a moment.

Life is full of bumps and bruises, scars, aches, pains, throbbing, and sometimes, gut wrenching sobs, but those pains are only temporary. We may experience pain, broken relationships, failures big and small. Those things can sometimes seem like the end of the road. But last time I checked, Jesus said differently. He’s in the business of rooting for the underdog, the one least likely to succeed. The one most broken and in need. The ones that have made the biggest failures. King David’s father didn’t seem to think he was even worthwhile to be considered as the possible future king when Samuel came seeking to anoint the next king. When he did become king, he had an affair with Bathsheba and sent her husband Uriah to the front lines in order to cover his tracks. The consequences of his decisions never left his household. Yet, he was called a man after God’s own heart and his son Solomon became the wisest man ever to walk this earth. King David was in the family lineage of Jesus and we still talk about him today. Yes, he was a man with a past – hurts, painful family line, yet God preserved his throne forever in through His son Jesus.

And while most people will probably read this and look at their own inner struggles and feel some peace with this sentiment – that God can forgive even you...now I’m going to ask you to take just a moment and take it one step further. Take a moment to bring to mind someone among your family, friends or church that you have overlooked, that has done something that hurt you or that you simply don’t understand, someone who has made some really bad life choices (in your own perspective), someone who carries hurt, pain, wounds, divisions, who has even turned from the expected ways of doing things. What about them? Can God do the same for them? Can He also include them in His family lineage and create something very great with them also? Even if things don’t look right now like you think they should? Even if there is not even a glimmer of hope in this present moment? What if they never come around to the way you expect of them? It’s a hard thought to consider sometimes.

It is hard when we don’t understand why people do what they do. Why do they choose a certain religion? A certain way of life? Certain failures, mistakes or sins?

Something happened after my mom passed that was so eye-opening. I still find it too personal to share publicly, but I can say this. Sometimes things are not what we think. Sometimes people are doing things for reasons that we never could have imagined or foreseen. Sometimes God is writing a story that we can’t even fathom in our limited earthly perspectives. What does He say of heaven? He says that “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9 RSVCE). When did our perspectives get so limited?

These days I see people go to their own faith denomination or political party, etc, in order to figure out the other. I’m still trying to understand that idea. To me, it seems akin to going to an auto mechanic to learn about the human heart. I read an interesting article recently about the church and it included a lot of pew research on how polarized we have become even in the pews. It was fascinating to read, and yet, nothing in in surprised me. As the article described things, polarization happens when we organize around what we are against, rather than what we are for. If there is anything I have noticed this year, it is this. Whether racism, elections, differing faiths, etc. Without some truth deeper than what is in the news or in our own imaginations about others’ doings, we will organize around the transient ideas instead of the truth that has withstood the test of time – God’s unchanging Word. And divisions multiply like rabbits. Let’s take racism as an example. What if we invested as much time into simply promoting the dignity of human life, regardless of creed, color, etc, as we invest into pointing to all that we are against or that drives us nuts? By living to attract people to the good that we see? You've probably heard the saying - you get more of what you focus on. If you’re interested in taking a look at the article, you can find it here:

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/why-are-we-each-others-throats-healing-polarization-our-church

But it’s more than that. These things that we are typically “against” don’t stem from humility. By this statement, I’m not saying that truth doesn’t exist or that moral relativism solves anything. I simply mean that, as the article pointed out, without anything in common to build upon, we won’t get far in actually solving anything. And I think that’s probably what we are missing most these days. And we’re all guilty in some degree or another. That’s the thing about sin – it slices through the hearts of every single one of us, and until we recognize our individual parts in it all – whatever divisions we may be aware of in our own lives, nothing will ever heal.

A priest I know said it best one day. He asked us to “pray that others will become what God wants them to be.” At first, I heard it as just another nice phrase. But over time, I have started to slowly grasp just how earth shattering of a prayer that this really is. It’s kind of shocking, actually. What if we quit trying to get our own way with things or pushing others away, etc, because they aren’t like us, and we simply pray that they become what God wants them to become? There is no downside to this. I think this is how people like Billy Graham became some of the biggest evangelists of modern history. They simply spoke the truth and let God do the work of changing minds. They focused on loving others, not drawing lines in the sand or trying to force their way, insulting others, being hurt, etc.

Love can only exist where true freedom exists. Anything else isn’t really love. God gave us free will for a reason – it’s the only way we could really say yes to His love. The amazing thing about this way of living is that it frees us to really, truly speak the truth – precisely because the results don’t depend on us personally. It is not a way to gloss over hard things, but a way to take the heat out of the air around hard subjects and to seek together to find what we are “for” rather than what we are “against.”

Now, to be fair, there are some relationships that are so unhealthy that they are just not safe to be in and I am not suggesting to not have boundaries when boundaries are needed – but those relationships are not as common as the divisions these days would like to assume. As an example, a lot of people like to throw around the term "toxic" without having a true knowledge of what that word really means - too often it seems to just mean "someone I don't like." But, I have also noticed that there is a big difference between a person who is seeking honest help and one who is seeking to tear others down and that is an important distinction to pay attention to. Jesus doesn’t ask us to tolerate abuse. But one thing we can truly do for all people is to pray this – that they will become who God wants them to be. Not who we say they should be. Who God says they will be. God is the only One who can see the entire picture of that person’s life and what His specific role is for them in this world.

Someday we may wake up and realize we don’t have another chance to get things right. Our lives are limited to a certain number of days and only God knows that number. Don’t waste time on things that just don’t matter. Skip the email. Skip the message. Pick up the phone and listen. Go see that person face to face. I am convinced that beyond all the misunderstandings and fear peddling this year, the fact that we are not seeing people face to face has contributed more than any other thing to these problems. It’s so easy to miscommunicate without hearing a voice or being able to quickly work through a misunderstanding with questions, body language, etc. It’s hard to look deeply into the eyes of another human being, one created in the image and likeness of God, a person infinitely complex, and think that they just don’t matter because they don’t think like we do.

So, who have you not talked to in awhile? What has stopped you from reaching out? What hurdles exist between you both and how have you contributed? What could you lay down for a day to simply listen to another perspective directly from the source, and not just those on your own side of the line? What are you insisting on that might be keeping true love from being possible?

Photo Credit: Biel Morro, stocksnap.io