"God helps us when there is no one else to help. God is there at the point of greatest tension, at the breaking point, at the center of the storm. In a way despair is at the center of things -- if only we are prepared to go through it. We must be prepared for a period when God is not there for us: The day when God is absent, when He is silent -- that is the beginning of prayer. Not when we have a lot to say, but when we say to God, 'I can't live without You, why are You so cruel, so silent?' This knowledge that we must find or die -- that makes us break through to the place where we are in the Presence. If we listen to what our hearts know of love and longing and are never afraid of despair, we find that victory is always there the other side of it."
-- Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray
4 comments:
Thank you for the "voice of hope".
Reminds me of psalms 42 & 43; it begins in despondency. God's a dry riverbed. It ends--not with moralism or total despair--but with a self-sermon. I love the tribal image, too.
Wonderful poem. Thanks so much.
This image is stunning.
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