Recently in Prayer Category

Twice in the last 48 hours God has winked at me. They were wry little winks - ones of the sort that I might normally miss.

This evening a friend who I haven't heard from in months and months texted me and said I'd been on his heart and that "Our Papa" put me there. This afternoon I thought of my friend and two nights ago he was in a dream I had - first one I ever remember him guest starring in - and last night I picked up The Shack, the little book that is making referring to God as "Papa" all the rage.

This evening, another conversation with another friend was deeply encouraging to me. She referenced a particular book that proved to be very helpful in helping me develop a book project I'm considering.

Little things. Tiny things. Things certainly explainable by chance or quarks or quacks. But things too that have the distinct feel of winks from God. It is all a matter a choice really. Do I choose to believe that God winks? Or do I choose to believe everything is a matter of science and that's that. I choose winks no matter how naive or how much of a simpleton that might make me.

When the bridge went down on Wednesday night, the fears for massive loss of life were great. I talked to a reporter friend on the scene and she said that the sense was it might be pretty bad.

Now comes news that the loss of life is likely be far lower than expected:

As many as 30 had been feared missing because the bridge fell during bumper-to-bumper traffic.

"We were surprised that we didn't have more people seriously injured and killed," Minneapolis Fire Chief Jim Clack said. "I think it was something of a miracle."

Why those that were lost were lost is not a question we can answer in spiritual terms. But that the loss of life wasn't greater, that the injured will survive after a bridge collapsed is something that God deserves credit for. The fire chief is right, it is "something of a miracle." I find it so easy to blame God at the worst and to forget him at other times assuming that having things go well should be the norm. I pray for safe travels for my wife when she has to leave. I pray for safety and protection for my girls (and now boy) and when they are safe a big part of my mind simply thinks, "good, great, yeah, that is the way it is supposed to be."

I don't want to keep living that way though. I want to live in great thankfulness for all that God does every day. And one good place to start is to thank Him for saving so many lives that horrible night and for hearing the prayers of so many people.

The collapse makes no sense. It simply shouldn't have happened. People driving home from work should not die because a bridge suddenly buckles. The engineers may well find an explanation, a technical explanation, for what occurred. That explanation will still not make much sense to our souls.

I heard yesterday that a former colleague - a still young woman - passed away. My response was the natural human response, "What happened?"

I didn't just want to know, I needed to know.

Death never really makes sense. This our hearts know best. There isn't a death - save for the wickedest despots - that gives our souls relief. Even when the very old die our hearts, our souls, still skip a beat. There is still a sad heaviness. There is still the knowledge that this isn't the way things were meant to be.

That is because this isn't how things were meant to be. We were not made to die. We were made to live.

I don't mean this in a rah-rah sense; not in a motivational speaker sense.