Many years I ago, when I was in my first pastorate, I received a card from a parishioner. On the outside it read: “YOU are the answer to my prayer!” On the inside, “You are not what I prayed for but apparently you are the answer.”
It’s an apt summary for much of our prayer life. We pray for someone to get well, for another to find a job, for the end of marital problems, the success of children and more. And often our prayers are not answered to our satisfaction. It can occasion a real crisis of faith.
Toward the end of one of his movies Woody Allen comments, “It’s not that I have anything against God, I think the worst you could say of God is that God is an underachiever.” In our minds, God never quite lives up to God’s potential.
God’s perceived underachievement is the stuff of Isaiah’s lament in the 64th chapter. It’s worth a moment to read it. It is a psalm of communal lament. It is one person writing for an entire community that is feeling completely bereft of God’s presence.
“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” It is an anguished outburst. Having prayed all the prayers of politeness, having exhausted all possible human alternatives, the cry erupts, “Tear open the heavens and come down!”
This is the prayer for those moments when we have prayed and felt we were talking to ourselves. It is the prayer of frustration and powerlessness in the face of that which we cannot change. It is a prayer for today.
It may be a little surprising to realize that anyone in the Bible ever prayed this kind of prayer. Personally, I find it comforting to think that the spiritual giants of our religious history struggled in their relationship with God.
It wasn’t until I started to seriously study scripture that I got over the impression that people in the Bible had the God thing all figured out. If God was always so obvious, like Moses and the burning bush or Paul getting knocked on his butt on the way to Damascus, staying connected to God would be a snap.
But that’s not usually the way it happens. There may be the occasional burning bush, or the unmistakable voice of God somewhere deep inside us. But more often than not, while I am busy looking for God in primary colors, bold strokes and angel choruses, God is found in the shadows, speaking in a whisper. Whispers are hard to hear when you’re waiting for the Hallelujah Chorus.
God is not going to show up on our command in a readily recognizable form carrying the answer to all our prayers.
Enter Advent. While the world calls us to be loud and busy; Advent calls us to be quiet and still. The world calls us to do more and buy more; Advent calls us to wait expectantly and seek the gifts that are given and received without money. The world calls us to create a holiday celebration, Advent reminds us that God offers the best celebration: life that is rich and full and tender and just.
Advent rhythm is the antidote to what’s out of whack with Christmas. God is in the silence, waiting to whisper in the quiet that comes when we pause, when we are in the emptiness that is usually filled with the busyness of our days.
While we are waiting for the shouts, God comes in whispers, in the spaces between what we dream for and what is. God comes in the spaces between our deepest longing and our greatest fears. God whispers our name in the silent spaces.
It may not be what we pray for, but apparently, it is the answer.
The Irreverent Reverend 
Thank you, Pat. A reflective way to start the day….
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Thank you!
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