Answering Prayers (or Every Day is Valentine's Day)

                                                      Today, like every other day,
                                                      we wake up empty and frightened.
                                                      Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
                                                      Take down a musical instrument.
                                                      Let the beauty we love be what we do.
                                                      There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.  -- Rumi
                                                                                            
Lately, I have been praying continuously and fervently. The state of the world frightens me. The growing scale of problems overwhelms me.  And so, like Abraham Lincoln, each day I fall to my knees because I believe that I have nowhere else to go.

On a recent morning, I began the day with my usual catalog of prayers when a thought took hold of me: what if God doesn’t answer prayers? 

Initially, the idea stunned me but quickly grew into a confident belief. 

As I remained still and quiet, a story from the Book of Genesis came to me:  God saw that man was lonely, and God made a companion for the forlorn man.

I meditated on that and began to entertain a question.  What if that was the original response to prayer?  And the once-and-for-all, forever answer?

Man had a need he could not name, and he received a solution he could not have conceived.  It was a solution birthed from the man’s own ribs, from a part of his being.  The answer was a companion, the gift of someone like himself.

Has God anticipated our needs? And having anticipated our needs has God created someone to help us meet each one of them?  Could I be the answer to someone’s prayers?

What if each of us lived with the belief that we contain the spark of the divine, the ability to answer prayers? What if each of us was raised not with the question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” But with the query: “Whose prayers will you answer today?”  Might that be the response to the great existential question, “Why am I here?”  And might it be the road back to paradise?

I continue to convene with God each day.  Like C.S. Lewis, I just can’t seem to help myself. It doesn’t change God, but I hope that it changes me.

God saw that man was lonely.  He made you someone’s valentine.  Perhaps you have yet to meet, but someone is looking for you today.  Someone needs you.  Open your eyes and your heart.  Answer someone’s prayers and believe that there is someone ready to answer yours.