Prayers with Wings

Dove in Flight-public domain

Oaks and a few struggling pines snug down into this pocket valley, offering refuge from the mid-day heat. Above the aged line of treetops, a barren hillock lunges upward, step by jagged step. From where I sit, this shady dent in the earth is the palm of God’s great hand.

Beyond me lies “the world” and all its machinations, its splendors, its complexities, its uncounted woes

A simplistic scenario, of course. Woe and splendor are played out here as elsewhere. But for the moment, I can settle back beneath the branches of this gnarly old behemoth and pretend we are sequestered here together.

We see beyond us the long, tangled-scrub heights, a fairly formidable barrier, and beyond that the great unknown where “the rest of the world lives and dies.” It is, for now, beyond our seeing.

Now let's imagine sudden wings upon our backs. We are able to rise above these “formidable” heights and see beyond. The heights have shrunk beneath us, and now breadth is our barrier. So much of a muchness! Too much to take in, to compress into a soul-scape sized to our perceiving.

And once again we are instantly equipped for this great transposition. We have only to lock our eyes upon some small, distant point . . . and we are there. It lies before us, demystified.

Now we see with unaccustomed clarity, close up, what once was simply an unknown―or a vague perplexity, a perhaps dangerous complexity, with attributes that distance had distorted. Now we know what is, and our response is subject to our sudden fuller vision.

Back and forth we go, from one compelling spot or scene to another, taking in the new landscape, perceiving what is in the context of all that lies around it―all we never really knew before.

And then, back once again in our familiar “pocket,” we are changed; we are spoiled for the old margins and myopias that so long constricted us. We will go out beyond the barriers of height and breadth, on the wing of expanded thought…on the Wing of Prayer. We will see, or more aptly, perceive, and we will know. And we will listen for the Word that puts it all in focus.

Vision . . . the point of this small, homely metaphor. Vision creates the kind of prayer that leaps all barriers of land and mind and spirit. And of course, prayer creates the kind of Vision that knows no barriers. It is this sacred synergy that draws us to that God-filled dimension, “a little lower than the angels,” where the real work of the Kingdom is done.

A great leap of faith indeed.

Vision . . . that insight/hindsight/foresight Begotten within us when we aren't gnawing on the bones of earth. We often have wings when we least expect and most need them—and now we feel the push and rush of wind beneath our aspirations. This is an uncommon-common gift of God, this perception. It is meant to be ordinary—which is why it is extraordinary.

Humanity is, by nature, bred to think beyond our small world-set, but it is our own questing thoughts (and those of others) that guide us. When God moves upon us, He infiltrates; it is a beautiful Awakening. Our responses to ordinary become, if we choose, extraordinary. Seeing beyond sight. Knowing beyond our staid or heated opinion. Our conjectures and mental-emotional particularities are confirmed or amended or shredded—with sudden and often compelling clarity. For the smallest reasons, by our reckoning. It is, perhaps, the difference between begrudging and believing. The schism between pouting and praying. It is meant to become our ordinary, this Second Sight—for greater reasons than we can imagine, by the reckoning of God. And this is the ground laid for prayer.

When this wonderfully real Gift comes, it comes at the point of sacrifice—our willing escape from that prison-of-mind which long constrained us. When we are touched by this costly commonality—unity—this hidden treasure released in us and by us, we are free. We become real. More real than we ever pretended to before. And everything looks different.

In our stumble of living, there is refuge from our raw responses. We are, when we plead, held in the palm of God’s great hand, to learn and to tell back what we now see.

Our prayers will have wings.