Well it always helps to pray no matter what is on you mind. Here, let me teach you a quick little poem prayer you can remember. Tony, Tony come around. Something's lost that must be found."
"So, you just say that and then you will find what's lost?'
"Well, not exactly. You say a prayer and you get better at looking."
"I can do that!
That story always makes me smile. Just one small introduction to the many incremental lessons on the mysterious ways of prayer. I think back and consider how I could have nuanced the explanation. I do some theological nit-picking, but all-in-all, it was age-appropriate and only slightly heretical
Still, my mindset today makes me wonder. Was I in reality, just setting him up? I mean things get lost and never get found. Not just baseball mitts or your other shoe. Really important things. Sometimes even people. We had a tragic event recently in our small town when an elderly dementia patient wandered off from a facility and could not be found. Police, firefighters, search and rescue teams, dogs, horses, and drones--every possible resource was employed to no avail. They did not find her body for two weeks and when they did she was less than half a mile from where she'd started, having fallen, apparently, into a steep and overgrown ravine--what the locals call a "holler." The ravine was alongside the parking lot of a nearby church where, like all the various churches, countless prayers had lifted heavenward on her behalf.
"Tony, Tony come around. Something's lost and must be found..." If only it were that simple. If only there were an 800 number. I do not know why some prayers are answered so immediately and joyously and others fail so spectacularly. I do know that losses are a necessary part of life from which we cannot be protected. From the moment we lose the protection of our mother's womb, a process is set in motion wherein we gain and we also lose.
"It's always good to pray..." I said it to my grandson then and I would say it again. The praying might change him far more than his circumstances and that could indeed be a good thing. But was I wrong to encourage him to pray? To give him the hope that God would hear and care?
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father's care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. (Mt. 10:29-30).
I still believe this. I believe it even as I continue to pray for the family of the poor woman lost in the woods. I believe the gray hairs on her head were counted by God, that in God’s eyes, she was worth more than the many sparrows and woodland creatures who surrounded her in her death. I believe that God cared for and comforted her and will continue to care for and to comfort her family.
My only proof of this is that I have been loved that way myself and I have loved that way in return. I have pulled up the covers on that slumbering six-year-old. I have stroked and kissed the hairs on his head. And in that moment, I have known that God does the same.
We once had a retired Jesuit priest whose favorite saying was, "You cannot outdo God in generosity.” The finest impulse I ever had, the deepest love I ever felt, the bravest thing I ever did—all of this is but a shadow of God’s goodness, love, and power.
Tonight when you lay your head upon your pillow, may you feel a slight stroke upon the hairs of your head, however numbered or gray they may be. Amen.