"A Dim View", the Challenge of Faith and Prayer

I recently returned from Chicago. I travelled there to sit beside a friend whose daughter fought for her life in the Critical Care Unit at Northwestern Hospital. The young and talented 18 year old girl was stricken with failing lungs and her survival was very much in question. Thankfully, she has made some improvement in the past few days, and my prayers are that she continues on that path.

As is often the case in these dire situations, we pray one thing but expect a different result altogether. We pray for healing but we doubt it will happen. We pray for patience, but continue to rush and push through our world. We pray for healing in our warring world, but have no faith in our personal power to affect change. We pray for forgiveness, but continue to condemn ourselves and others.

The discontinuity between what we pray, and what we actually think and do is a sign of Christian immaturity. And we ALL struggle with it! I am grateful that even as I only partially seek to know God and follow God, He fully seeks to know me. One day, we will all face Him, and the burning questions along with collected disappointments will either fade or instantaneously come into focus. At that moment, we will be living out the prophecy of Paul in 1 Corinthians: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see through a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”