Prayer Tunneling

For much of his life my husband, Craig, has wanted to visit the Southwest–particularly Monument Valley, where the John Wayne westerners were filmed. We recently did just that–including many national parks in the area, including Mesa Verde, Canyonlands, Arches, Bryce Canyon, Zion, and the Grand Canyon. The sights were spectacular…but we had surprising serendipities along the way, too.

One of our unexpected experiences was driving into Zion National Park through a one-mile tunnel chiseled out of solid rock. Only one-way traffic was allowed through the tunnel, as any accident could cut off traffic from the east entrance of the park for hours.

As we drove into the pitch blackness, I thought about what Father Tim in the Mitford series novels by Jan Karon would call the perfect prayer: “Thy will be done.”

When we pray that prayer, we give up our vision, our sight, our expectations of what we want in exchange for a period of Wait. We hope. We summon faith. We trust. Sometimes it feels as though we’re crawling through a dark tunnel.

But God has light shining for us after that Wait. What we see on the other side of ou Thy-will-be-done prayer may not be what we pictured. However, it is perfect, beautiful, and right.

I’m praying today that if you are in that prayerful Wait, especially if it feels like a dark tunnel, that your faith and love for the Tunnel Engineer only deepens.

How can I pray for you today?