I Am Heard

Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.

—Jeremiah 29:12

You’re not listening to me.”

I cringed at my son’s words. He was right. I wasn’t listening.

Moments before, he’d asked to talk to me. I don’t remember what kept me distracted, proof that whatever occupied my attention wasn’t all that important. Whether it was washing the dinner dishes, putting a load of laundry in the washing machine, or—to my shame—checking my phone, it doesn’t really matter. I allowed the trivial to keep me from the significant. In all my self-important busyness, I hadn’t slowed enough to look my son in the eye and listen to what mattered so much to him.

With his honest rebuke, I stopped, embarrassed. Putting aside whatever lesser task had captured my attention, I apologized and promised to listen.

Of course, it wasn’t the last time I fumbled in this regard. How many times do I allow myself to become so preoccupied with my to-do’s that I miss the people right in front of me?

Perhaps this is why I struggle to believe that the Creator of the Universe slows His planet-spinning to listen to me. If my dishes and laundry and cell phone require so much of my attention, how much more an earth filled with billions of people with needs far greater than mine? Poverty, disease, famine, war. Need I go on? God has His hands full with to-do’s. It’s incomprehensible that He’d stop long enough to hear me.

King David and other psalmists often cried out with prayers similar to my own. Like me, their circumstances made them desperate to know their tears and pleas were heard by the only one who could relieve them:

Sound familiar? I’ve filled journal pages with similar sentiments. At times, these writers even questioned God’s presence, assuming their unrelieved suffering was evidence of God’s absence: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest” (Ps. 22: 1–2).

One of my earliest memories is an answered prayer. I couldn’t have been more than five years old at the time. A favorite aunt and uncle came into town for a visit—a single night, as I recall. I loved spending time with them and savored every moment. Until my dad sent me to bed. Devastated, I responded by throwing a Hollywood-worthy fit. But in all my theatrics, I forgot to say goodbye to my aunt and uncle. This didn’t occur to me until I’d turned off the bedroom light and crawled into bed. There, crying tears of regret into my pillow, I prayed for God to give me a second chance.

Minutes later, the bedroom door cracked open and my uncle came in to say goodnight. The moment lasted only long enough for me to say goodbye, but the impact lasted for years. God heard me. What mattered to me mattered to Him.

And yet, many times since, in spite of my bent knees and begging, bigger prayers seem to have been ignored. And yet, even when one prayer remains unanswered, other prayers are clearly heard. It is then that God’s nearness shows up in ways I never expected.

On one particularly difficult day, a month or two after my recent cancer treatment ended, I wrote the following words in my journal: “God, it’s tough coming to terms with this ‘new me.’ I miss my old life, the healthy and strong version of me. What are You up to? How will You use this? I need to see some greater good and purpose. Otherwise, it’s just senseless loss, meaningless. God, help me to see You today! Help me to see You working.”

A modern-day psalm, you could say. An honest revelation of a woman’s spiritual struggle in the face of pain.

Less than an hour later, an email from Jonathan, a stranger halfway across the world in Italy, landed in my inbox: “You know how they always say that you might always find ways through your story to help those who are going through similar situations? Today I listened to you tell your story. It’s uncanny how similar our paths have been. . . . I do not know how you are doing right now, but I want you to know that God is still using you, sometimes in uncanny ways. Your suffering is not in vain, and regardless of what lies in between, we have a certain outcome because we believe the God who can be trusted beyond a doubt. . . . In the meantime, as you wait on God, keep looking for that daily manna. I thank God for allowing our paths to cross in such a significant way, even if we live thousands of miles apart.”

Does the Creator of the Universe hear the prayers of His creation?

Yes, He does.

I can’t explain the resolution of some prayers and the prolonged ache of others. But I know He hears me, even as my prayers mingle with multitudes of others. Including yours. Unlike me, the Father will never be distracted.

Trust that He hears you, even when it seems otherwise. Ask Him to reveal His activity and presence, to reassure you of His listening ear and tender concern. And then claim, with confidence, “God has surely listened and has heard my prayer” (Ps. 66:19).

It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want but, whether we use religious language for it or not, the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle that we are really after. And that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get.

—FREDERICK BUECHNER, THE MAGNIFICENT DEFEAT