I need a center for my life today, a rock I can anchor to, something unmovable. It’s you. I call out to you from a soul that seems intent on being adrift, an amateur Spiderman who is falling and desperately shooting out unsuccessful webs, trying to attach them somewhere. I tend to look to new or changing relationships, to my bank account, to plans for the future, to my past skills. I find that none of those things buttresses me, none feel solid in my grasping hands. They are all like water droplets that fall suddenly off a leaf once its moved. Nothing temporal and earth-born soaks into my soul to refresh me.
Heaven is what I need—an infusion of everlasting serum, a slab of granite truth underneath my path, a word that drips from God like cool water and forms a stalactite over my head, pointing downward directly to an undeserving, pitiable me.
Lord, don’t let my life become frayed, like so many ribbons flying in the wind. The scissors of time are relentless and loud, snapping and clipping away at the shredded ends. This can’t go on forever. Eventually the scissors will get too close to my fingers and I will have to let go. I must have something more solid than streamers—fleeting desires, thoughts, and plans. I must have a solid core—packed, dense. It must be you-there-with-me. That’s my core! Then I can be surrounded by my surface self, the part everyone sees. Don’t ever let my true insides burst out like renegade rubber bands, so that all the world can gawk at my effusive and gushing unwound naked self. But when I bounce into a room or onto a sidewalk, let me remain coiled up tight, my spirit impenetrable by anything worldly, fleshly, carnal. Yet remain permeable to your Spirit, soaking in your rain and dew, the moisture from your breathed Word and heart-whispers.
I wish I could say it in a way that could really change me, and in which I could get a check-plus mark on my daily schoolwork paper. But, I don’t know how to be honest being so self-deceptive for so long. I could lie on the floor of a supermarket and kick and scream this prayer like a three-year old child, and it might get some attention, but not the right kind. I could put my hand in paint and ask you to be very still, then place it gently against your chest. Removing it I would giggle with glee because now it’s permanent and you can’t get away from my touch. Or I could ask you to go with me and be my invisible Friend, like Germs, the imaginary dog.
I have an idea: I will hide somewhere in you, and then laugh as people try to find Me. Would that work? But I’m so big and bumbling and loud that that would be hard. So, that is the dilemma I find myself in. My faults rumble in like a Sherman tank hung with Christmas bells. Can you help me get quiet. I need stealth. Hammer me into a shape that won’t bounce back onto people and let them see me. I desperately want people to see you, Jesus!
Thanks for listening today. If you were a regular guy, you wouldn’t have understood this bizarre prayer.
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