Open Your Eyes

While on vacation, I found myself praying before a tremendous sunrise. I was sitting in a chair on an old wooden deck, huddled against the morning’s cool breeze, watching as the reds, oranges, and pinks of the rising sun slowly stretched across the open water like a warm and welcoming hand. The dock began to take shape at the water’s edge, throwing off the silhouetted shadows in which it had been entrapped by the early morning light. I could see those off-white planks jutting out from shore. Birds dotted the sky, no longer dark and mysterious smudges, but full flesh and blood creatures going about their morning routines. The clouds added texture to the sun’s shifting hues, making the whole morning feel like the rough pastel sketch of an artist.

I sat there, reveled in the glory of God unfolding before me, noted how wondrous it was to encounter God in such a space, and then I closed my eyes to pray.

I closed my eyes to pray.

I immediately noted the absurdity of such an act. There I sat before the majesty of an unfurling morning on the Florida coast, and my instinct was to shut my eyes against such beauty. I opened my eyes again and took in the colors of the sun, the gentle ebb and flow of the waves, and the birds circling above.

Then I resisted the urge to close my eyes again.

My usual way of prayer is to close my eyes, it’s true. There’s peace in that; it allows the imagination to flex its wiry muscles. I listen for God in the dark silence of the morning. I allow the Spirit to weave words and wisdom with the needles of my awakening mind.

But usually, such prayer takes place in the corner of my living room, lit by a single lamp. There are no birds, no waves, no yawning colors of a lumbering sun. There are just my cats and the drapes pulled tight, beauty of a different sort.

My usual way of prayer is good and helpful. But I was not in my usual place, and I nearly missed what was unusual—in fact, extraordinary—about that morning in my attempts to conform myself to my usual ways.

God, being in all things, can and does speak to us through any number of mediums. The imagination, though important, is but one. The same can be said about darkness and silence. Sometimes, God desires to speak through the morning cries of a myriad of sea birds circling the brightening Florida skies.

I’m struck by that impulse to pray in the usual way. I wonder how many of us feel such an impulse day in and day out. It’s not a bad instinct, and yet it can distract us from the new things God is doing right in front of us. It can distract from the beauty and the wonder and the extraordinary.

Sometimes, our prayer life becomes stuck, and we don’t even realize it. We don’t see in our misguided efforts to find God in the same dusty old corner that we are literally closing our eyes to God standing before us.

And if we close our eyes to God in the majestic, how much more tempting is it to close our eyes to God intimately present in suffering? Christ is in those paralyzed by fear and those suffering from abuse, neglect, violence, and loneliness. Do we see such horrors and turn away in that same misguided attempt to find God behind our eyelids?

There are many ways to pray. I believe God invites us to experience the Spirit through different forms of prayer as we enter new seasons of our lives. But so, too, do I believe God attempts to startle us from our usual prayer so as to awaken in us a deeper sense of the fullness of creation, the needs of our world, and the beauty of all that is.

If God is in all things, then we should not be surprised when God uses all things to speak to us.