Are you still praying?

“Hey, are you still praying about that stuff on our prayer board?”

I hear Josh ask this of Riley as we ease in at a stoplight, on our way home from their classes.  Filtered through the fiery trees, late afternoon sunlight bathes the world in warm pinks and golds.  In the rearview mirror, I can see their hands swirled together, resting in the middle of the seat between them.  I can see them turned toward each other, oblivious to me, talking gently.

I sigh as we roll to a clotted stop, feeling so keenly hungry, for what I do not know.  I briefly close my eyes, assessing, remembering something I read recently in a novel, how one of the characters so often felt as though rush hour were a personal attack.  I related so much I wanted to snap a picture of the page and keep the phrasing.  At the end of the year, over holidays that should be rich with everlasting gifts, with glory and immeasurable grace, attacks seem to come from everywhere, and not just at rush hour.  Pain snarls and bodies groan.  Hearts hurt.  Distractions lure.  We toss glitter in the air as we drive off to all the usual places, the appointments, the responsibilities, and somehow hope, all on our own, to make some magic.  Turns out the most wonderful time of year is also one of the hardest to manage.

Are you still praying?

Maybe Josh isn’t the only one asking, because somewhere in my hungry heart, another old question, one falling from the lips of the Savior, flickers at the end of a call to persistent prayer:

When he comes, will he find faith on the earth?

Where does Advent begin if not on our knees?

Turns out power to change the world isn’t produced or won but given, as a gift.

Riley murmurs her assent, nodding, says easily to Josh, “Yes, I pray about the things on our prayer board. I pray about the things on our prayer board at night, while I get ready for bed.”

So, before Riley surrenders her body to helplessness, she surrenders her heart, peering into the gathering darkness for His light.

In Riley’s room, in my mind now I see it leaning against the wall beside her bed, a trifold board, with a crooked line drawn in marker down the center, one side labeled prayers, the other labeled answers in Riley’s hard-pressed hand, the marker digging deep.  Her y’s look a little bit like crosses with broken crossbeams.  Every day I notice the curled edges of the sticky notes where she writes out her petitions, curled where she’s been touching them.  I notice how gradually she moves the notes from one side of the board to the other, how she’s always adding more.  It’s a conversation taking shape, their hopes offered up like incense, those bright slips of paper like flames of faith.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard our young adults described as children in their minds, nor how many times over the years those words have come out in conversation laced with pity.  I always want to stop the talk just to say that I sincerely hope one day I’m a child in my mind, too.  I ask God to make it so, in fact, to give me a humble heart, am doing so even now, my eyes flicking back and forth between the stop light—still red—and the witness of the two of them here in my backseat looking like love, two children in their minds talking softly to each other about persistent prayer.  Prayer, which they naturally and unapologetically understand not as some flimsy, desperate, scrabbling reach, but as the most powerful and effective action of faith human beings ever take.

It was Jesus who said, “Unless you become like a child, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” and this in response to a question from His disciples about who will be the greatest there.  From what I can tell, our human misconceptions about greatness date all the way back to our rebellion against God’s intentions, and sitting as witness now to Josh and Riley’s accountability, to their trust in God and the shelter of His love, I can see that they occupy both the more enviable position and the one most naturally human.  There seems to be this Biblical shout that the greatest there are the least here, the ones seeking the lasting things, the ones still praying, unashamed to admit how much they need Him.

Inspired, for what is inspiration except a deep inhale of God, I open my hands, turning my empty, testifying palms up, and begin to pray in earnest myself, taking deep gulping breaths right at the stoplight, because this I know: The only answer for feeling empty is to come be full of Him.  I borrow from Paul, asking God to open the eyes of my heart, to let me know His incomparably great power for us who believe.  All I want is to swirl my sore, striving hands with His, offering everything surrendered, my eyes still sliding back and forth between the signal to go or stay, and Josh and Riley’s example of how to keep doing both at once.  I realize this is exactly how we will be enlarged and not diminished as we go and while we wait.  While I wait for the light to change, yes, but also while Josh and Riley live their lives, waiting to realize their big dreams, while I keep driving through traffic and wait quietly—that stillness, even as I go—with God, because every season really is a season to wait for Him.

Are you still praying?

“Okay, because you know we need to pray about this stuff every day, even when we’re not together,” Josh says.  There he goes now, leading her with a hand, light against the small of her back, while he sits beside her, waiting to get on home.

“Yeah, I know, Josh.  I know we need to keep praying,” Riley says, and then her joy bubbles over, laughter spilling out of her smile as the light changes, and I put my waiting foot on the gas.

Are you still praying?  Because you know we never want to stop.

This is not a conversation we have with one another often enough, I’m thinking, as we stop and go our way on down the road, even those of us apprenticed to Jesus and listening to His prayers, especially those of us still pretending to be self-sufficient and okay.  But this is how we wait with hope, how we manage to keep on not just through the most wonderful time, but all time.

Maybe it’s only that Josh and Riley have no disillusionment about their situation and no capacity for pretense.  Maybe it’s that they carry so many impossible, improbable, implausible conditions, like heavy suitcases for their dreams, that they understand their need of support, and not just from other limited people, but from their unlimited God.  Maybe it’s that no one quite understands their need for His power like those who are children in their minds.

I’m thinking the fullness I’ve been looking for has been waiting for me all along, not some fueling I’ll ever find for myself, but the gift of God, alive in me.  The peace I’m longing to find is only Christ.  So maybe not more of the glitter tossed in the air, but instead the constant whisper of an Advent prayer, as I peer through the darkness and wait for Him.