Reading Francis

I pray a lot of different prayers. I’ve got a whole lineup of them in the morning and in the evening and at points during the day and week. Some are scheduled, some are accidental. Some are scripted and beautiful, some are sighs and include some not-very-holy words. Some are questions and some are requests.

I was just reflecting how, more and more, I really just have one prayer: 

God, let me be useful to You today.

Right after realizing how much that one simple prayer had taken over my day, I opened the book I was reading, and the end of the first paragraph I read was:

“Not everyone in the Bible is a saint by later standards, but most are people God can use (my emphasis) for some purpose.” (Rohr, The Tears of Things, p. 146)

Before I was reflecting on being useful, I had been reflecting on how the word of the past week for me had been Mystery, not in the whodunit sense of a riddle to solve, but in the, well, mystical sense of appreciating the Divine that transcends human understanding.

Lately, there’s been a lot of that “mysterious usefulness” in my life – people popping up on my mind or my prayer list who, it turns out, had been going through a lot and needed the prayers. Other people showing up out of the blue to ask for a suggestion or with an idea for a new project for me that allowed me to be useful. Complete strangers appearing that I could help find their way or who could help me find mine.

I can’t convince you that I’m not just imprinting an imagined order on a random series of events. Nor can I convince you that it isn’t just the work of some well-designed algorithms. But it sure seems more than those explanations, and I am grateful for these opportunities to be mysteriously useful.