Events speak to us if we are prepared to hear. It can happen that the message is brief and simple. It can happen, also, that the message is more significant and requires a greater sense of openness to hear it and then a greater desire and patience to work with it to explore and understand it.
Our culture in the beginning of the 21st Century is more inclined toward “hit and run messaging.” It has to fit within the limits of size and time on a TV screen, or within the measure of a hand-held screen. We are encouraged to move in the direction of quick decisions, quick purchases, and quick commitments of limited, even if positive value.
There is a depth to human living that requires more. There is a depth to our faith that offers more than this. When they come together, faith joined to human living draws out the meaning and value of each day’s journey, and no experience’s meaning is lost. We can move from the immediate impact of an experience, great or small, to the deeper meaning and value I can uncover, to the life-giving, life-transforming meaning that God communicates to us.
When we have done “all that we have been commanded [by God],” and all that has been given us or required of us by daily life, can we take the time to explore it with God, in prayer? Are we able to shape prayer so as to lay before God what seems a stumbling block 2 to lay before God whatever seems to have only hidden meaning 2 to lay before God that look, that smile, that word, that touch, that quiet, that sound, that taste that touched our very soul? What does this prayer feel like? Authentic? Humble? Life giving? Life affirming? Something of which I desire more?