Take the Long Way Home

 Joy was at the end of a very difficult pregnancy.  After a long and arduous labor her son was finally born, the doctors weren’t sure he was going to survive, but he had been born.  Very soon the little boy began to thrive and the immediate threat was somewhat diminished.  But Joy was not doing so well, she had begun to hemorrage and nothing seemed to stop it.  Now Joy was a good little Baptist girl and she believed all the nonsense that she had been told about Catholics and their repititous prayers.  She always prayed the “right way”, you know, spontaneously.  No canned words for her.  But as she lay on the operating table she felt quite certain that she was going to die.  This was not a panicked fear, but a heartfelt certainty - she was going to die on that operating table.  She was never going to see her new son, or her other two children ever again, she was going to have to trust that her husband was going to take care of these little ones.  She wanted desparately to talk to God, she wanted to put them in His hands, she wanted to cry out to Him, but the pain was too much.  The hurt was so intense that coherent thought was not possible.  But what would and did come out was the Our Father.  This prayer was memorized and could be said without gathering words.  It expressed everything that she needed to say.  It expresses everything that any of us ever need to say:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Evil

What else is there?

Joy prayed this prayer, out loud, over and over and over and over.  All the while that the doctors and nurses were frantically prepping her for surgery she kept up her prayer.  Over and over and over and over.  She wasn’t really aware that she was saying it out loud, but she was.  After the ordeal was over, and she did not die, but lived to to see her precious little ones again, one of the nurses came to see her.  She commented on how serene Joy had been in the midst of the turmoil, and how much she had been affected by Joy’s prayers. 

So what is the verdict?  Did God despise my friend Joy’s prayers?  Were they merely vain and repititous words, devoid of meaning? 

Joy certainly didn’t think they were devoid of meaning, for her they were full of meaning.  They were the evidence of God’s presence on the gourney with her, they were the rock she clung to in her most deparate hour.