Phillips Michael R - Land of the Brave and the Free

I ts been sixteen days now.

Sometimes I feel that my prayers go unheard. There is no change. The peaceful face still sleeps, only sleeps. I continue to sit here, gazing upon those features, wondering who this iswho and why and how did it happen... what does it mean? And I continue to pray.

But I grow fainthearted. I wonder if God does truly mean to restore and heal and make alive again, or is this the time when he has stepped across, as he does in every life, into the tide of mans affairs to take another soul of his making unto himself?

If indeed this is such a moment, then my prayers are in opposition to his will and plan. Do I pray in opposition to his sovereignty?

Such difficult questions always seem to plague mewhether it be about an unknown face with sleeping countenance, or about mysteries in your Word or uncertainties concerning your work among men and those who call themselves your people. No answers are quick to come.

And still the compelling in my heart grows stronger and stronger concerning this one whose being is presently in my hands, that pray I must. Surely this precious life about which I yet know nothingsurely it is not time for it to end.

My thoughts, as they so often do, beckoned me outside to the hills and fields and streams and trees I so dearly love. I grabbed up my New Testament, knowing that Mrs. Timms would watch over my charge well, and went out.

It was early afternoon. The sun was high and I wondered where its warmth had gone from the summer of such a few short months ago.

I left the house and took the path eastward, then abandoned it altogether. I jumped the fence bordering it, struck out across the wide pasture where some cows were grazing at the far end, working my way up the slight incline to the thin wood about half a mile away. Notwithstanding the early November chill that hinted at snows and storms and fierce blasts of hail even now beginning their slow journeys down from the arctic, the day was a glorious one to be out. The thin breeze that kicked up every now and then foreshadowed almost more by odor than by feel the approaching winter, adding a tingling sensation in both nose and skin to the warmth of the suns rays that was purely and deliciously pleasant. The great vault of blue overhead was unbroken save by a few slender wisps of white from the chimneys of some of the surrounding farms, but even these had diffused into nothingness before reaching a third of the way up against the horizon. Straight above me was nothing but the infinitude of distance, stretching into regions of space unknown by man, into the very heart of God himself.

I threw myself down in the springy, sun-warmed and sun-softened grass, breathed in deeply with pleasure, and let my eyes drift into the unknowable blue depth above me.

Lord God, I whispered, where are you up there? Where is your home in the heavens that people are so fond of talking about in the pious tones of their prayers, when I feel you so vitally alive in the tiny place within my own being I call my heart? Do they know you there too, Lord? Or do they look up and speak of you with such lofty grandeur because they have not yet learned to look for you in the still quiet places within their own beings?

All about me was quiet except for an occasional distant baritone low of a contentedly feeding cow. Gods voice is never easy to hear, never so readily discernible to the inner ears of my being as the sounds of his creatures are to the outer ears of my head. I often wonder why he made it sothat if he wants us to heed every whisper of his voice, why that voice is so soft to our human senses. But perhaps what he wants more even than our hearing him is our obeying him when we do not hear him. If his voice were too loud and his commands too unmistakable, perhaps the requirement upon our own wills would not be so great, and our obedience would thus be less.

Again, I found myself lost in obscure regions of Gods unknowable purposes. And one thing I did know, that I mustnt lose sight of my purpose, which was clear enough, nor tarry too long before returning to it. I jumped up and continued my way toward the wood.

As I walked, my thoughts returned, as they often did, to reflecting on this terrible war and its claim on human life, on the untold suffering it has caused... and once again, as how many times before, to the question which haunts me: Did I make the right decision? Was my stand one that God desired me to take? Or was I then, and am I still, wrong and out of step with the rest of Gods people? If God did indeed speak with his still small voice into my mind and thoughts, into my heart and convictions, then why did no one understand? Why was their denunciation of me so unequivocal and vicious simply because Ione of their own, a comrade, a fellow member in the brotherhood of Gods familyspoke out the truth I felt compelled to voice? If I was indeed wrong, as they say, why did they not take me tenderly to their bosom and, in gentlest love, seek to help me discover my error? If perchance I was right, why did they not humble themselves to hear my words and themselves seek truth beyond their own selfish interests? But to cast me adrift with their heartless and cruel accusations, without so much as an inlet wherein to tether the leaking vessel of my faith, full of doubt and uncertain of the calling I was so sure of only a few short years before...