It was around 4 p.m. on a dusty Tuesday afternoon when I came rolling into Lost Chances, New Mexico, in the high desert about an hour and a half west of Santa Fe. My tank was as dry as the air around me, so I was grateful to see the lone station, sign squeaking back and forth in the arid wind. As I pulled up to the single pump, stepped out, and began filling up, I took in the sights of this half-a-horse town. Not much to see: a vape store, a drive-thru donut shop, Dollar General a few blocks distant.
And, then, the strangest thing caught my eye right across the street. There, in what looked like a converted old-time movie theater was a museum, of all things. The marquee read, in letters partially missing, yet still legible: “Museum of Muted Prayers.” As you can imagine, I was pretty intrigued, and with a little time to kill, I pulled my now-filled car away from the pumps and walked across the highway to the ticket window. A young, blond, twentysomething girl reading last year’s Sarah J. Maas novel behind the window eyed me warily as I approached. Looking back down at her book, she mumbled, “You’n just go on in…nobody’s been here all day.”
“What’s in there?” I asked.
Head down, still reading: “That depends.”
“On what?”
She looks up, and saw me, as if for the first time. “On you.”
So, in I went. The open theater lobby was empty and pitch dark. A single, fluorescent-lit hallway guided me to the exhibits, all tucked away behind cheap trophy cabinets. Despite the quiet oddity of everything that happened since I stopped, of all these surroundings, there was something eerily familiar about the contents within those cabinets. I walked to take a closer look.
…and, there, in the first cabinet, I was shocked to see a painful, yet poignant display. There, arrayed before me, was every failed math test I had ever taken in high school. Some had “Ds”, and some “Fs”, yet all served as painful reminders of how I had failed to apply myself back then. I would find any excuse not to study, then walk into the classroom, praying that the Lord would somehow give me a passing grade. What was I expecting? That God would supernaturally bring angels with scrolls bearing all the correct answers to the text, a horde of angels helping me cheat the tests I didn’t study for? I reflected on all the flat-out stupid prayers I’ve prayed, asking the Lord for things that just defy common sense, requests over which any good parent would just laugh, or shake his head, or ignore. Like a good parent, God had the kind wisdom to quickly forget those dumb prayers. I remembered the words of C.S. Lewis, “You may attribute miracles to him, but not nonsense.”
The next cabinet was filled with old boarding passes, each with my name on them. I travel a lot, and as I thought about those flights, some of them recent, every single one of them were late, delayed due to weather, or mechanical issues, or, most recently, because Air Force One was at the same airport, jamming up traffic. At the end of a long work day, I prayed that each one of those flights would carry me home on time, get me back to Tyler, to my family…right NOW. And, here, in this museum, I had a vision of another man, running late from his also-delayed connection to make the same flight, desperately asking God to make the flight I was on to get home to his dad, who had just had a heart attack and who he was worried sick about. We live in a complex, amazingly intricate world, interrelated with every other person on this planet. How many of my unanswered prayers have brought tears of joy to the eyes of someone else, who needed that flight to be delayed in that very moment, an answered prayer, a true God-send?
Across from that cabinet was a photo of Felicia Moore, my eighth-grade crush. Oh, my goodness, was I infatuated with that girl! I was a hormonally-emancipated guy with glasses and the beginning of bad acne, and she was a beautiful angel. You can imagine how this was going to go for me. I remember praying every night that somehow that girl would fall for me, that she would see the guy I really was, see the heart behind the thick glasses and stick-like physique.
I bought a cheap fake gold necklace in the shape of an “F” at Foley’s and gave it to her, an act of awkward boldness that makes me cringe to think about now. She received it with casual indifference, and it broke my heart. As you probably know, my wife’s name is Ashley, not Felicia, and the greatest gift God has probably ever given me was to reject the “Felicia prayer.” I mean, I’m sure she turned out to be a nice gal, but God had something for me a million times better. He’s left a lot of those kinds of prayers unanswered, praise Him.
The second to the last cabinet was darker, and in it was filled with images of some of your loved ones, and some of mine. Some still living, and some who are with Jesus now. How many times did I sit by that little girl’s bedside, praying for that tumor to go away, only to be sitting by that same bedside, whispering the Psalms in her ear, as she took her last breath? How many times have I sat with a parent, or a husband, or a wife, holding their hand or my arm around them, crying with them and asking God to intervene, bringing the supernatural to the devastatingly natural? How many times have I asked the Lord to go ahead and take this one I love, only to have him hang on another day, another week, another month?
They’re called miracles because of how rare they are, these intrusions into the way things are supposed to be now, the painful now, before the not yet we sometimes forget we desperately long for until moments just like these. And, most of the time, God delivers us through them, rather than from. He molds, shapes, refines, carves, and rakes away, all through the trudging onward. As Pete Grieg says, “There is a divine alchemy at work in all faithful suffering. We look back and realize that it was actually our disappointments and not our plaudits that the Lord has transformed to gold. Now we know what we once doubted, ‘that in all things…God works for the good for those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’” Or, as Job cries out, “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Behind the glass in the final cabinet was what might have been the hardest exhibit to view, because these were images of things I’ve been asking God for for years, and for which I’m still asking. Not selfish things, but things clearly within his will—the salvation of a close family member, his provision for our school, revival in the hearts of our nation and our community, the healing of a loved one, another’s loneliness. And yet, because of God’s silence, I find myself pressing more deeply into him, praying more fervently, more passionately, seeking his face and his presence and his voice. I find that I am drawing ever closer to him, in ever deeper relationship with him, precisely because the prayer is, as yet, unanswered. As a Father, my God, who holds the universe and all these things in his kind, generous, omnipotent hand, loves me, and is not anxious for me to leave his presence, does not want me walking away too quickly. In those moments, my practice within his presence may matter more than even the answer to my prayers.
As I walk out of the museum and to my car, temperature dropping with a cold wind, setting sun causing me to blink away fresh tears, I remembered an old poem by an ancient soldier long since gone away:
I asked for strength that I might achieve;
He made me weak that I might obey
I asked for health that I might do greater things;
I was given grace that I might do better things.
I asked for riches that I might be happy;
I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men;
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all the things that I might enjoy life;
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.
I received nothing that I asked for, all that I hoped for.
My prayer was answered, I was most blessed.
Many of the ideas in this blog came from Pete Greig’s great classic on unanswered prayer, God on Mute. I highly recommend it.
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