The Many and Dynamic Ways God Answers Prayers

Pietro da Cortona - Calling of St. Peter and St. Andrew (c. 1650-1750)

I was going to a meeting, and I planned to send my lot rent check on my way there. Not thinking much of it, I put the envelope with the check in it on the roof of my car with my coffee as I got in my car. I grabbed my coffee, but I forgot about the envelope, and it blew off the roof. Then I spent the next fifteen minutes looking all over for it and didn't find it. I decided, well, I guess it's time to get to the meeting.

So I started driving to the meeting, and started praying. I prayed to St. Anthony, prayed a few Hail Marys. It was a cloudy day. I was at a stop light. I closed my eyes, prayed deeply. I felt the sun peek from behind the clouds, saw it through my closed eyes even. Then I opened my eyes and---what do you know---the envelope was stuck between my wiper and my windshield, just fluttering in the wind.

Is that an answer to prayer? I'm not saying it is. Whatever. It may be. It might have just been my absent-mindedness, followed by me finally collecting myself and being able to focus and see where the envelope was all along. But that doesn't negate the fact that prayer helps, because even if prayers don't get answered I could at least say my praying helped me focus, helped me calm down, helped me notice that the wide world around me is not out to get me like I was starting to think. Prayer helped me notice that if I just focused I would find the answers I was looking for.

It could also mean that maybe prayer doesn't bring about miracles, but maybe it at least helps us align our thoughts with the Creator of the universe, with the One who is reality himself, thereby helping us see the truth better.

In the case of finding the envelope, I just needed to acknowledge reality more by opening my mind to other possibilities. Why didn't I think to look by the windshield wipers? I don't know. I was getting frustrated, which impaired my judgment. Prayer helped dissolve that frustration.

So, in one way or another, I do believe someone, or some group---God, saints, deceased loved ones, all the above maybe, I don't know---they're looking out for me in one way or another. And I think they're trying to show me that you don't need to believe in miracles to believe in God. You can believe in miracles while believing in God. It is probably most logical to believe that the Creator of the universe, the one who is reality, can alter reality when he sees fit. But if this God who is ... is who he says he is, then he doesn't have to perform miracles to prove that he is who he says he is. He just needs to bring us into tune with him, with reality. He just needs to bring into better focus for us that which already is.

When I lost the envelope, I was seeing reality out of focus. That's all.

The Questions and All That Stuff

These spiritual beings looking out for us, whoever they are, I feel like they're sparing me from the most potent lesson of all that would actually finally one day make the spiritual world all the more real to me, but at a very great cost. That reality they are sparing me from is the reality of hell. I have not experienced hell. I have not felt the flames in this life. A lot of people like to kind of boast and say things like, "I know hell exists because I've experienced it." I've experienced my share of tragedy and pain in life, but I don't think I've actually experienced hell. Sadly, that may be the very reason I'm struggling to believe.

I'm reminded of the movie, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, where Emily---who became possessed---willingly allowed herself to continue to suffer in that way so that people may know evil exists, and in this way they can know God exists as well.

Does the existence of evil prove the existence of God? Maybe, maybe not. You could accept that whole worldview and cosmology if you want, but just because evil exists doesn't necessarily mean God exists. RIght? I mean, you can take in all of the different mythologies and start to see the cosmos as the ancients did, and believe there's a whole world of deities, some good, some evil. The more I live, the more I notice that many of our ideas of good are actually just different, more disguised forms of evil. Goodnes can be known, but it isn't as easy to know as we think. After all, who is good but God? And who actually knows God? Who's to say that the depiction of God and the spiritual world that Christianity gives is the right one? In this multicultural world, we have bits and pieces of different beliefs from various religions, pseudo-religions, and quasi-religions bombarding us, all giving us their own ideas of the divine, the ethereal, the supernatural, and the spiritual aspects of life and existence. Curiously, only Christianity, Judaism, and Islam even claim that there's only one deity. Why do we even believe that? It's not common. There is a reason why we believe it, but I think it's worth revisiting.

First of all, how do we know that the Christian God doesn't just want us to think he is the only God? What god wouldn't want that? After all he has done for us, isn't it only fair for him to expect our undivided worship and devotion?

But, all he has done for us---even if it is all true---still doesn't make him God of ev-er-y-thing. Even if he did descend to our world, even if he did incarnate himself through the Virgin Mary, even if he did perform miracles and rise from the dead, none of that would make him the one and only true God. Other gods, theoretically, could do all those things. So, what makes God in fact the only God?

And even if there aren't any actual gods of any sort, I can still imagine a being who is superior to us wanting us to believe that he is the only being even remotely like him. I'd want my significant other to think there's no other man like me, after all. And that's the problem: jealousy. Scripture even says that our God is a jealous God (see Exodus 20:5, Exodus 34:14, and Deuteronomy 4:24). So, who's to say God isn't just an alien with superior intelligence and abilities who wants to think he is the only God?

Philosophy Helps

Well, I can't quote whoever said it (someone more learned than me might), but I do remember learning in my college philosophy class that God is the utmost form of every thought. He is the ideal which we have in mind when we think of transcendent ideas like truth, justice, love, goodness, beauty, peace. These ideals don't exist in perfect form in our fallen world, yet we still somehow know they exist.

Therefore, taking this philosophical approach, God is perfect truth and cannot lie. He would then also be perfect beauty, justice, goodness, love, peace, hope, and all the ideals. He is the reason we can contemplate all these transcendent concepts, even though we never experience them in their perfect form in this world. He is reason itself.

But doesn't that just seem like a convenient cop-out for him? It's basically saying he can't lie because everything he says is the truth. That's circular reasoning. Many authoritarian leaders and regimes have used the same false logic.

But let's just say the Christian philosophers, and Christ, are telling the truth. And so, in this concept of God, there is nothing above him. There is nothing lacking in him. He is in need of nothing, therefore anything other than him is less than him and therefore not God. And that's simply what we mean by God.

So, in that case, we just have to entertain this different thought of God. God isn't just another being who is greater than humans. The ancient gods, even, weren't just deities who were immortal and had superhuman abilities. Even angels are that way, after all. The saints are even, in a way, superhuman. There could even be an advanced race that is superhuman. That still would not make them gods. Perhaps they'd be gods in the way some primaeval cultures thought of gods. But that's not what later polytheistic cultures meant by "gods", and that's certainly not what Christians mean by "God".

Even small "g" gods had to be worthy of worship in some way, before people worshipped them. They had to be superior to their subjects while also representing the values and qualities that their subjects desired. Therein lies the essence of worship: The worshipped deity had to be a provider of some kind, at least to some extent. They also had to be mysterious, distant, set apart, and even perfect or whole in some way. Or else, why would anyone worship them? Gods, even in the pagan sense, had to have at least some of the qualities that became fully manifested in the one true God. Or else, what were people worshipping in the first place?

The ancients only had a desire for God, but they weren't completely wrong in how they went about seeking him. That desire is in us all, and it leads us on the same innate journey to find the one true God. We may often get it wrong, but the desire is still there.

God is the only non-contingent being; he is the only being who is in need of nothing. And there can't be anything else that is like him because that would imply that one of him is not enough. Why would there be a need for two perfect beings? Wouldn't one perfect being cancel out the other, eventually, noticing that the other is not needed? Reaching perfection is not as much about adding things, as it is about taking things away.

And that leads to our next big question about God: If he is sufficient in and of himself and in need of nothing, why did he create everything? He could have gone on for all of eternity existing all by himself and needing nothing. That also explains why God must be a Trinity, because isn't a God who is One in need of at least company? Doesn't a non-contingent, all-powerful being at least need to love something other than himself?

Yes. He loves his son, and his son loves him, and the love between them is the Holy Spirit. And that's how we get to the Trinity.

But that just begs the question: Why did he create everything else? He already had love and omnipotence.

It is because it is the nature of love to diffuse itself. Love, by its very nature, does not keep itself to itself. Love does not simply love itself. It has to give in order to be love or else it is not love. God's giving of himself is his creation where there are traces of him and his love everywhere. He created everything in an act of love.

So, I can understand that. That just begs another question, though, one that a lot of new mythologies are playing around with: the idea of multiple realities, multiple universes. Who's to say that there isn't another God in another universe who is also all-powerful? There might be, I don't know.

You could just keep going with that, though. There has to be an end to it somewhere, right? Like Aquinas says, there can only be one first cause.

The funny thing is, all the attempts to escape our faith in God as a civilization led right back to him. Granted, a priest named Msgr. Lemaitre helped, but we still arrived right back at a first cause: the Big Bang. We had a Cartesian complex for a while. We doubted our own faith and assumed the assumptions of our ancestors were wrong. Then we took the scientific route, listened to Descartes, started with skepticism, went on a century-long journey of deductive reasoning, and arrived right back where we started, at the beginning. We even entertained the ancient thought that there was no beginning, that we're just going round and round for all eternity. Well, I'm not going to get into that. Let's just say we are going somewhere, but it may be the wheels of history that are getting us there.

Anyway ...

To Be a Rambling Spirit

So, what is the point of all these ramblings? It's quite simple. I have these thoughts and I'm tired of them being just thoughts. Even when something in reality seems to be an answer to prayer, it isn't absolutely an answer. It doesn't have to be. It could be. I could see it that way. I could use it as a way to strengthen my faith.

But my faith could also be all the things I was trying to explain above. It could just be that prayer just helps me focus and acknowledge the reality around me. Either way, prayer is still good. But it doesn't mean heaven is answering me. It doesn't mean it isn't either, though.

It could also mean that heaven is answering. There are many ways heaven can answer. It could be just a soft voice in my head saying to calm down and look at the big picture, and remember what you were taught. It doesn't mean it's just voices in my head. It could be heavenly beings---saints, angels, deceased loved ones, God---speaking to me . . . but, it could also still just be voices in my head.

I don't know. It's all such a mystery. We're just left here in this fallen world trying to figure it all out. For millennia, human beings have understood that there is something more than what we can sense with our physical senses. Just walking through the park, I see children playing baseball filled with the joy of life, parents filled with a completely different kind of joy in seeing their children play. There are so many different elements to life that are good and so many that are bad. They all mix together to create this crazy world we live in, that just leaves us with question after question.

So, when I ramble like this, I hope the reader understands the value of rambling. I may have absolutely no end in mind, but we're in this together. Anyone who proposes a certain end or purpose to what they write, anyone who approaches anything with a plan, is offering a very narrow view of everything. That's not always a bad thing. Maybe the whole point is to bring readers to just that ... a point, some pointy, poignant truth relevant to some very specific circumstance. And that's fine. I'm not bashing niches here. I get the value of the division of labor.

But I think our culture needs a few more vistas of the big picture. No matter what we try to encapsulate, there is more to it. So, we're only fooling ourselves when we claim to have a plan. Mohammed Ali was on point when he said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." That's because reality is always bigger than us.

And so, Rambling Spirit acknowledges that life is much bigger than us, and the one who wanders is not lost, like Tolkien said. What he meant by that is that the one who wanders, whether it be on the road or in their thoughts, they're simply acknowledging the fact that there is so much more to learn and there is never an end to the search. They're just inviting you along with them on their journey of rambling.

And that's all rambling is. I'm wandering with my words. And there is nothing wrong with that. So, let's stop using that word in derogatory fashion, like, "He just keeps rambling on and on. There's no underlying point to what he's saying." How do you know? Despite the fact that the rambler presently has no point, he may come to one. He may just stumble upon some truth without even planning to. In fact, I believe the most genuine discoveries are found in that way, because they're not of us. They're not even born of our intent. They come from somewhere else, somewhere beyond us we didn't know how to find, somewhere we had to be led to.

And that is what I mean by having a rambling spirit. We don't know where we're going, but we trust the One who guides us. This increases our faith. This helps us know that every good thing that comes to us is by God's providence, because it certainly was not part of our planning. This helps us notice how life often rhymes, and how it rings more true when we don't force it to rhyme. Perhaps most importantly, it helps us remain more open to God's unpredictable will in our lives, and keeps us free enough to hear his voice so we can follow him when he calls us, like the first disciples did from their boats.