Silly Big Prayers

Sitting curled up, cup of tea, book in hand on prayer. Indian spice tea aroma mingles with the author’s stories of the “silly” prayer requests God loves to answer—such as bumping up an economy seat to a business class seat on an airplane. Something the author knows is not necessary. Something superfluous. He’d be happy and content in economy as well. But he prayed it… and God answered. He got a luxury business flight seat.

I love that—the reaffirmation that God is lavish in his love, cares about the details, such a Sovereign King that things like that can be done. That we are his children, and we can run to him with those “silly” requests. That he who was pleased to give us the kingdom is pleased to give us small things like that too.

But then…. I turn away from my book. Seek to adjust position and muscles and back groan with the slight movement. “Lord, what about those times when I’m in such intense pain and misery I cried out for just five minutes, just five minutes of relief. Then the pain could have come back, but it would have been five minutes in which I knew for certain you cared, you looked on, you responded. Five minutes of an answered prayer that would have kept me going. Would five minutes of pain relief changed the world? It’s not like praying there’s no rain on such-and-such date and then the farmer’s crop dries up…. What harm in the prayer like that? Just five minutes of relief, to get a breath….”

But no relief. The answer was not yes. No silly little blessing.

And ISIS's persecution against Christians? The starving children in Africa? The cancer patient who isn't healed? The bigger questions and bigger unanswered prayers?

Why? Is God truly a God who answers? Who cares? Was the plane ticket bump-up just coincidence? Does God not care about those “silly” things? Does he not even care about five minutes of relief? Is this lavish Father God, this Giver-of-All-Good-Gifts truly who God is?

I ask. “Lord, what do you have to say to that?” I wait. Silence.

“Job. Perhaps it’s not about you. Perhaps the continued hammer blows with no relief showed the heavenlies that your relationship with me was not about answers, pain relief. You still believed. What if my no answer then was a goldbeating to perfect the hammered gold that gilds your faith?”

“Paul in 2 Corinthians 1. What if it was so you could know to a greater degree the perseverance needed in pain and the no-answers to comfort someone else down the road?”

“Habakkuk. What if it was to make you wrestle with my character and thus see me more clearly?”

“Moses in Deuteronomy 29:29. What if it is a reason you don’t know? What if?”

And I bow my head. His answer did not come in three chapters of thunderstorm as in Job. Quiet. And peace. He answers now—“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). Father. Good pleasure. Fear not. How can I doubt, he who had the good pleasure to delight in me, in his presence, in his kingdom?

No silly little blessing then, but he had answered. He had responded. Still in lavish love.

I don’t know why five minutes of pain relief was not granted. I don’t know why my bigger cries and supplications are not granted. But I know he hears, and he responds. I don’t know why, but I know Who. It wasn’t a silly little prayer request—for he had a purpose for those five minutes of a responded to but ungranted prayer. He has a purpose for luxury seats in planes. Not random, not coincidence, not favoring one child over another, not squashing one and lavishing another. Both are answers in pure grace. Why? I don’t know, but like Job, Paul, Moses, and Habakkuk, I trust and worship. And offer silly little prayer requests. Because he listens, and responds in his wisdom and love.