Good morning…
“…you answered my prayer when I shouted for help,” said Psalm 31:22 as yesterday’s post ended. Soon after I re-read these words written by Paula D’Arcy.
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Excerpt from Seeking God With All My Heart
The unexpected gift of my work in prisons has been occasional moments of unequalled poignancy. Once, following a general evening talk, a woman prisoner asked me to account for God’s absence when she was repeatedly violated as a child. “I cried out,” she said, “and help never came. Tell me why.”
There was no simple response. Her eyes brimmed with intensity and challenge. I remember telling her that I couldn’t have answers for her. But I believed that God would bring greater understanding to her heart if she could open it. I told her that she reminded me of myself following my family’s deaths. I never heard anything until my heart softened. It was a necessary step. A hard heart does not hear. Anger renders you deaf.
As she left the room that evening, she brushed close to my ear and said coarsely, “You know that thing you said about softening the heart? I’m going to try.”
I began volunteering as a counselor in that prison, and thais same woman came to see me several times. The sessions were always the same. Few words would be spoken. We simply sat together. But in that sitting, a sense of caring grew. I learned that she had lost two children in a single accident and had no money to bury them properly. She committed a crime in order to pay for their caskets. She looked through me as she told me that story.
I was painfully aware that we were two souls thrown together by chance in this god-forsaken, rundown room in a federal prison. Even the room’s single plant was fighting for life. Without speaking, our hearts knew one another’s capacity for pain. The spirit within me looked at her without judgement. I knew this life was hard. Very hard. I knew that pain had long tentacles and that I was looking at a soul for whom pain had exceeded the limit she could bear. I saw her, and there was no longer any choice. In that seeing came Love.
The little room became a place of communion. There was no bread, and wine was forbidden. There was darkness and brokenness, and also immeasurable light. I can’t describe all that we glimpsed. I can only say that we were looking from a different place, deep within each of us.
Everything is identified with Love, a Love that flows through everything, filling everything. We just can’t see it. Only from the place of spirit does Love become visible. (84-85)
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Often God does not answer our prayers immediately when we shout for help. For a very long time, life’s pain and our anger can render us deaf. As our hearts gradually soften, our spirits sense Spirit and Love becomes visible.
Love should be your guide. Be eager to have the gifts that come from the Holy Spirit (I Corinthians 14:1a, CEV).
…Sue…
