A
violent gust of wind snatches everything out of my hands before I can arrange
it into any semblance of order.
A
host of tiny letters dances through the air, flung hither and thither by the
breeze, black marks printed on a grey page of clouds. Some scatter across the
grass, others fly up into the swaying branches of a nearby tree where they
catch amongst the bare twigs and riotously flutter out of reach. In the midst
of the type characters, I watch whole words pitching up and down high above my
head, dispersing chaotically, and colliding senselessly into one another. Dry
leaves of paper are tossed into the atmosphere. Torn pages blow in every
direction like small tumbling birds, wings powerless to direct their flight.
I
stretch my arms out, leaping and grabbing in an ineffectual attempt to retrieve
the jumble of letters, words and paper scraps but they lurch further into the
sky, well beyond the reach of my fingers.
I
shout in frustration but I am robbed even of wordless sound as it too is seized
instantly by the wind and flung aside like winter debris.
No
matter how hard I try, I cannot catch all the fragments whirling round about
me.
If
I could just gather them all together in one place out of this wind, I can perhaps
begin to figure out how to stitch them into comprehensible sentences but the
wind is far too strong. Everything eludes my grasp.
As
I stand buffeted and bewildered, I suddenly notice the man. He is seated on the
ground beneath the tree. I hadn’t seen him before, having been too busy in my
frantic activity. As he sits, he calmly plucks letters and words from the air, capturing
them in his hands. The wind whips his hair across his face and as he tilts his
head sideways to shift the strands, he looks up at me and smiles. He doesn’t
speak, but simply carries on effortlessly catching words. My words. One by one,
the pieces are carried by the turbulent currents towards him and into his hands
where they remain, no longer affected by the wind.
The scene ends there, just a brief flare of the imagination. A thought that drops into my mind as I attempt to pray one day. An attempt that feels just like chasing words in the wind.
The
cross winds of life can make prayer a difficult and sometimes impossible task
for us. How do we order everything that we are thinking and feeling into words
that can be called prayer?
What
a relief to picture Jesus smiling his reassurance to us.
‘It’s all right, I’ve got this. Stop trying so hard and instead trust what I can do. I’m out
here in the wind with you even though you didn’t notice me. I am your prayer
maker.’
It’s
OK that we don’t know how to pray sometimes. Jesus will write our prayers for
us. He knows us far better than we can ever know ourselves anyway and he knows
that when stormy winds blow in our souls, we need his help. We can stop being
so hard on ourselves. We can stop reaching and struggling. If you don’t have
words for your heart, then simply bring your heart. Jesus takes the heavy sighing
efforts of our souls and makes them pure
expressions of prayer..
‘Meanwhile,
the moment we get tired in the waiting,
God’s Spirit is right alongside helping
us along.
If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter.
He does our
praying in and for us,
making prayer out of wordless sighs,
our aching groans.’
Romans 8:26 (Msg)
Perhaps
when strong soul winds are swirling words beyond our grasp, the best thing to
do is go and sit beside Jesus under the tree and rest knowing that he has it
all under control. Wordlessly sit in a posture of prayer and allow his Spirit
to suffuse us with peaceful reassurance.
