Connected?

 

I lift the receiver of the land line to my ear and am assaulted by crackling, loud and insistent. Two weeks now.

We had been able to make and receive calls, albeit having to shout through the static. But now, after the efforts of three engineers over ten days, we have nothing but the static. No connection. The line has been broken and all communication stopped.

We’ve been advised the job should be completed by Thursday. There are two faults in the underground cable.

Going back a couple of decades, our children used to sing a (rather tedious) song: Prayer is like a telephone. I didn’t like the song much, but the analogy holds up.

Just like the cable establishing our phone connection, lying under dirt and weeds and subject to the vagaries of weather, my connection to God lies buried beneath the ordinary things of life, where it can become buried under activities and responsibilities and subject to the news of the day. I know that persistent soaking in the news of the day can undermine the integrity of my connection to God.

There are times when my connection to Him seems crackly. I struggle to hear His voice. I don’t need to call out an engineer though; the Engineer is waiting, alert to my cry. Instead, I need to wait on Him, trusting that He has not left me and He is listening. Even when the divine line has been degraded by the world, I know that the Lord hears my every cry because He knows my words before I utter them, my thoughts before I identify them.

I am so grateful for the gift of prayer, an unbreakable connection with the Creator of the universe. May my life today be lived as a prayer to my maker, even as I write, shop, and strip wallpaper (ugh…).