051505

This is beautiful and something I can relate to as well:

05/14/08
Something Understood
Jill Carattini

"Do you see this woman?" The question confronted me as if it were aimed as
much at me as the guests around the table. Jesus was eating at the house
of a religious man who had invited him to dinner. They were reclining at
the table when a woman who was very easily remembered for her flaws came
stumbling over the dinner guests, making her way to the feet of Jesus.
Weeping over them, she broke a costly vial of perfume, wiping his feet dry
with her hair. Who didn't see her? Who didn't notice her
strange commotion? Who among them didn't immediately recognize how out of
place she really was? Yet he asks, "Do you see this woman?" (Luke 7:44).
Apparently, Jesus saw something the rest did not.

The late seventeenth century poet George Herbert once described prayer in
a detailed list of stirring metaphors. Among the first lines, prayer is
described as "the soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage." At those
words I cannot help but picture the woman lying prostrate at Christ's
feet. As she poured out the perfume, so she poured out her soul. Her
prayer was one without words, her worship spilled out as tears upon his
feet. Onlookers saw a sinful woman, and an extravagant waste. Jesus saw
a heart in pilgrimage, a prayer understood.

I remember the first time I was unapologetically honest with God; my head
was bowed but my hands were metaphorically pounding against his chest. In
silent reflection, I shouted internally. I told God I was jealous.
Everyone around me seemed to be experiencing the still, small voice, the
gentle touch of a Father’s hand, the assurance of God’s glory and power,
the confirmation of a hope and a future. But I couldn't feel God’s
presence, or hear God’s voice. I had more questions and uncertainty than
answers and assurance. It seemed as though I was relating to an empty
throne. Like an attention-starved child, I yelled at God for existing,
for forgetting to love me, for failing to understand.

In Herbert's list of words, my prayer this day was perhaps more fitting
"reversed thunder" or "Christ-side-piercing spear.” My words pled for the
presence of God, for the love and will of a good creator in my life, for
complete access to the loving Father I believed was real. But what I was
asking for sharply--and quite irreverently--required the death of the
Father’s innocent Son. I spoke in ignorance and in anger, making claims
like Job without understanding. I was not as interested in hearing at
that point as I was in shouting. But God heard. Responding to my
interrogation, God revealed my true question. I was tired of being the
stepchild, and yet I had been keeping the Father in my mind as something
more like a distant uncle. Seeing me, God showed me what I did not see.


"Do you see this woman?" Jesus asked as the others were questioning her
resolve and reputation. "I tell you, her many sins have been
forgiven--for she has loved much" (Luke 7:47). In the story that calls
our hearts and eyes to attention, we find that the woman not only saw God
when others did not, but more significantly, God saw her when others did
not. Pouring out all she had at the feet of Christ, weeping at the sight
of her massive debt in the face of an innocent man, her silent prayer was
interpreted, and answered. Then Jesus lifted her head and said to her,
"Your sins are forgiven" (7:48).

Fittingly, George Herbert concludes his grand description of prayer as
"something understood." At the feet of God, our broken words and hobbling
metaphors are translated. Whether we know what we mean or what we say, God
hears and knows and translates our own hearts to ourselves. Our tears and
our groans come before the throne of a Father where we are heard and
lifted as children understood.

Jill Carattini is senior associate writer at Ravi Zacharias
International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.