One Good Prayer

This morning, I had a few minutes before the walk to school, so I took out my prayer journal. What did I need?  What did the neighbors need?   Many things came to mind, but one thought kept recurring.  I knew I might pray for prosperity, for health, for safety, for success, or for any host of material things. God says we can ask for anything.  But I knew to pray this:

“Jesus, help us see you today.” 

Jonathan Swift wrote that “vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”  When I look at this day, right now, I know that God is at work.  And he sees what I don’t see.  Through suffering, through disappointment, through fear, through loneliness, God sees what I don’t see.  I want vision to see, with God’s help, what is otherwise invisible.  That’s flair. 

I want to see what God sees.  I want to pierce through that layer of my circumstances to perceive that invisible script that God writes.  These marks of God’s intentions, of God’s goodness, of God’s love, are here.  I pray that God sharpens my vision so I can see them. 

My sleuthing for daily flair is really a prayer to see the invisible thing–that underlying beauty and goodness in any situation, no matter how bleak.  It’s a prayer to identify, in every circumstance, the marks of a spiritual process.  When I see that process, I’m suddenly released from fear.  I can find hope and love here, even in pain or confusion. 

Living with flair means seeing the invisible thing. It means offering up a prayer to find God in whatever situation I’m in because, surely, he is here.