When Words Fail

I wrote up a short essay on prayer called “When Words Fail” and posted it on inamirrordimly.com. Here it is:

He put the prayer book down knowing that nothing had changed. His heart was frozen solid. Pride still clutched to his breast and self reigned in his thoughts. Where is God? Could God still have a use for me? What next?

Emptiness. A chilling void.

Adoration, supplication, scripture, hymns: words. All words bouncing off his hardened frame. Utterances were just noise vibrating from his throat and flipping off his tongue without meaning. Any notion that rolled in his consciousness crackled with static and disappated without taking shape.

He groped and crawled about his earth-bound soul only to finger the ordinary human scemes that had always burrowed into his waking hours. All was stamped with his own design. If not originals, he had adapted the creations of others and appropriated them to his religious cache.

Cold letters, grammar, and texts bound his spirit, dooming him to the inhospitable earth. Could his spirit escape, find relief, and connect with someone “other?” Was God reaching out to him? Could God do anything?

Falling to his knees, a storm thundered from his darkened eyes. The droplets pounded the earth, sowing seeds of despair. As if squeezing his final remnant of faith in clenched fists, he pounded it into the ground, mingling tears with fleeting faith. His downcast eyes failed to catch the first gleam of the sun as it rose over his storm-swept soul. Though imperceptable, his faith began to grow.

[tag]prayer, faith[/tag]