I hear many adults crying out for God to answer their prayers. I don't hear many children voice this same concern. Every evening during our family worship time, my children are overflowing with places where they have seen God today and stories of answered prayers. I struggle to come up with one. After some analysis and introspection, I think my prayers are too big. Certainly not too big for God to handle, but too big for me to see their end. Our recent camping trip to the Ochoco National Forest is case in point. I prayed that God would use the trip to grow our family and me ever closer to Him -- a good prayer, no doubt, but one that is hard to bring the answer into view on a daily basis. Cayla, my 10-year-old, prayed for God to show her a wild horse -- no less a miracle but certainly observable today. God answered both our prayers with a resounding "yes!" But it took me two weeks to begin to see the answer to my request. Cayla celebrates daily. This reality can be illustrated by yet another fun-filled Walker vacation. Three summers ago we all piled in the 15-passenger Ford E-350 and headed 3000 miles to Texas. Somewhere in Kansas I begin to face the impending truth that my sanity was slipping away. We were on one of those cruel straight-stretches where I could see out on the horizon the place we would be spending the night...3 nights from then. From my perspective of the road ahead I couldn't even tell that we were moving forward. I think once, it even looked like we were losing ground. Right then, from the back seat, Cayla's excitement filled the van as she proclaimed, "Wow! We are going so fast!" I quickly looked in the rearview mirror afraid that she too had lost her grip on sanity only to discover that she was looking out the side window at the blades of grass along the highway. Most of my prayers, as an adult, are horizon prayers. Most of Cayla's prayers, as a child, are blades of grass. Perhaps in our striving to draw near to God through conversation we could find the right tension between the horizon and the grass.Grass
I hear many adults crying out for God to answer their prayers. I don't hear many children voice this same concern. Every evening during our family worship time, my children are overflowing with places where they have seen God today and stories of answered prayers. I struggle to come up with one. After some analysis and introspection, I think my prayers are too big. Certainly not too big for God to handle, but too big for me to see their end. Our recent camping trip to the Ochoco National Forest is case in point. I prayed that God would use the trip to grow our family and me ever closer to Him -- a good prayer, no doubt, but one that is hard to bring the answer into view on a daily basis. Cayla, my 10-year-old, prayed for God to show her a wild horse -- no less a miracle but certainly observable today. God answered both our prayers with a resounding "yes!" But it took me two weeks to begin to see the answer to my request. Cayla celebrates daily. This reality can be illustrated by yet another fun-filled Walker vacation. Three summers ago we all piled in the 15-passenger Ford E-350 and headed 3000 miles to Texas. Somewhere in Kansas I begin to face the impending truth that my sanity was slipping away. We were on one of those cruel straight-stretches where I could see out on the horizon the place we would be spending the night...3 nights from then. From my perspective of the road ahead I couldn't even tell that we were moving forward. I think once, it even looked like we were losing ground. Right then, from the back seat, Cayla's excitement filled the van as she proclaimed, "Wow! We are going so fast!" I quickly looked in the rearview mirror afraid that she too had lost her grip on sanity only to discover that she was looking out the side window at the blades of grass along the highway. Most of my prayers, as an adult, are horizon prayers. Most of Cayla's prayers, as a child, are blades of grass. Perhaps in our striving to draw near to God through conversation we could find the right tension between the horizon and the grass.
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