The Unworthy Saint

“When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours that’s relativity.”

-Albert Einstein

Who am I to say I can help a single person by listening? Am I better at listening than God? All I’m doing is delaying or preventing the person I love from taking their problems to God. Who am I to do such a thing?

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

-John Donne

To believe any one thing only has one function is ludicrous.

“I am more than I know.” – H.A. Williams

There is a flaw in me that is the optimist and perfectionist made one. This entity say “Another time will be better than this, eventually the stars will align.” Later is says “Oh, the best time has already passed but perhaps the future will be better. At this point it’s best to wait until the time is right.”

I want to be God’s paintbrush.

We are told to pray in the name of Christ, for He is the one who makes us righteous so that we may appear before God; but we are not told to end our prayers with “in Christ’s name, amen.” In fact, we are told to “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) – so why then do we end our prayers with this? In fact, why is there a beginning and an end to prayer? Should we not always be in the middle of prayer?

Prayer is not just an open request line for our every want and desire. Prayer is communication with God and just like communication, prayer is not limited to just words.

Remember when your mother gave you that “you’re in big trouble” glare and your stomach sunk into the ground? Remember the embrace of your father that seemed to say “you’re safe with me”? Have you ever squeezed someone’s hand three times to say I love you (once for “I”, once for “love” and once for “you”)? These are all examples of actions being communication. And I would venture to say that everything we do says something to God – whether we are in sin and saying “I don’t want to be with you” or whether we are walking in righteousness and saying “Lord, it’s good to be with you.”

When we ask for something, and are in verbal communication with God, I do believe it’s proper to cite Christ, but it does not have to be the ending of our prayer – we, in fact, should never stop praying.

Today is my half birthday. I am twenty-three and one half years old. Some people would say “you’re not getting any younger” but I would have to argue. I think I’m getting younger, not in the chronological sense, but in my mind and in my creativity. It is my desire to be more like a child in my thinking; ever curious, always inquiring, always experimenting. It is my prayer that the height of my “maturity” (worldly maturity – my imposing of limits and constraints on my life) will have been at the age of twenty-two. I am attempting to walk backwards, to regain myself as I was when I was five. I seem to have lost myself along the way.

You see, Madeleine L’Engle is teaching me that many things are possible; things that one dismisses in the change from child to adult. Is it possible to walk on water or to transcend space/time and converse with Moses or Elijah? Perhaps. Why close off the possibility – because the “grown-up” world says to? As Albert Einstein said “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”

So I say out with the prejudices and in with the boundless possibilities I knew as a child. I’m going back – back to my childhood, back to seeing all the possibilities, back to an imagination in tune with God. Today I’m twenty-three and a half going on age five.

“Walking On Water” by Madeleine L’Engle is an unbelieveable book. I have so many things I want to share, but too many for right now. I’ll probably finish it in the next few days and I’ll write more about it then. But for all of those artists who are also Christians, I highly recommend this book. It sheds a new light on the creative process and what it means to be an artist.