May 8, 2019 I was spending my evening with Jesus at adoration, hoping to pass the hour in conversation with the Lord. Instead, my only prayer ended up being, “Jesus, please make the mouse go away!” I’m terrified of rodents. While I’m a mere fraction of an inch shy of six feet tall, and I know with certainty that mice can’t/won’t hurt me, fear ignores logic. If there’s a rodent anywhere near me, my instinctive reaction is to scream, cry and flee. When I walked into the adoration chapel that evening, I saw it immediately. It was a tiny field mouse, and it was standing in an open door across the room. I gasped and I froze. A kind deacon, distracted from his prayer by my panic, asked if I was ok. I could produce only one word, “mouse,” as I pointed to the doorway where the miniature monster was standing. The deacon quickly crossed the room and closed the door, causing the tiny inducer of terror to run away. I was saved. But I wasn’t. The diminutive demon was small enough to make its way under the door and back into the adoration chapel. It then proceeded to scurry around the room, mostly staying close to the walls. Every time the mouse moved more than a few inches away from a wall, I gasped. I was terrified. I must’ve prayed “Jesus, please make the mouse go away” hundreds of times. While I intended to spend the hour in conversation with the Lord, speaking what was on my heart and mind, and listening to what the Lord had to say to me, the best I could muster was to try to contain my terror so that I wasn’t distracting the other people there praying – people who were delightfully unaware of the little furball of fright wandering around the room. There are times when our prayer lives aren’t as profound or impactful as we’d like. There are times our hearts just aren’t in it. There are times when something in our lives – or something in the chapel – consumes our thoughts and distracts us from our conversations with God. And we hit dry spells – periods of desolation. God knows what’s on our hearts – our intent and our desire to have a relationship with Him – even if we don’t say it. While I’m no theologian, I’m pretty sure God’s happy when we show up and try to give Him our time and attention, even if we’re less than successful. He hears even our half-hearted and distracted prayers. And, yes, the mouse went away. |
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