Returning from a vacation to
For most of the 2,500-mile round trip to
The plan was for me to leave Faye in
The trip went very well. I deposited Faye in Houston,
Jennifer and the huggable ones in
I drove far into the rainy night and got a room at a Comfort
Inn in
Ninety-five miles out of
I pulled over to the side to change the tire. As I jacked up the car and loosened the lug nuts, I felt a sense of extreme well-being, even elation, that stemmed from a powerful sense of the presence of God, almost as if he were standing at my shoulder smiling at me. The flat tire, coming at this particular time, told me beyond doubt that God had answered my prayer and protected my family just as I had asked. Without the flat to make me reflect on it, I might have taken his protection for granted.
As I lowered the spare to the pavement, I still felt God smiling, as if trying to tell me something more. And as I hefted my ruined tire into the trunk, it hit me. I started laughing out loud (I can only guess what passing truckers thought).
I remembered my prayer. God had, with this flat, given me exactly what I had asked for but no more. The flat signaled an answer to prayer that made me acutely aware of his presence, but it was also his gentle elbow to the ribs that seemed to suggest a possible absurdity in my prayer. This possible absurdity was what tickled my funny bone.
Why did I bother to qualify my prayer with the “if?” As long as I was bending God’s ear, why didn’t I pray for the whole enchilada?
Why didn’t I pray that I would have no car trouble at all on the entire trip?
Why leave such a loophole as to be virtually asking for a flat tire?
(I do not suggest that God caused the flat. It seemed to me that whatever protection might have been around me was withdrawn at the moment my prayer allowed it, as if God was saying, “Okay, Tom, if this is really the way you want it.”)
As I headed on down I-40 and thought about it, I supposed I might have had two reasons for praying such a limited, conditional prayer.
First, I don’t expect to live a trouble-free life in this fallen world, and I find myself hesitant to ask for such. I’ll take the flats, God, if you’ll spare me the major traumas. Of course, ration-ally, I suspect the distinction between minor inconvenience and major trauma is not theologically viable. I have no more right to expect to be free from a Mack truck jumping the median and breaking my spinal cord than from changing a flat tire on a sunny day. But, on the other hand, is the scope of prayer limited? Are we allowed to ask for limited protection but not for total? Is the distinction merely one of degree and not of essence?
The other reason I might have been hesitant to ask for a completely trouble-free trip is the fear of asking for so much that disappointment is inevitable. Growing up as the child of a financially strapped preacher, I knew it was futile to ask for a bicycle for Christmas even though it might have been the desire of my heart. I would feel safe in asking for a pocket knife. I guess I assumed that if on every trip I take I pray for no trouble at all, sooner or later I’d be bound to be disappointed.
Flats happen. I guess I assume that no amount of prayer will
remove all trouble from our lives, so I pray a more limited, safer prayer that
has a better chance of getting a positive answer. After all, I tell myself,
even Jesus put that big “if” in his prayer in
I have never resolved these issues about prayer, but the flat tire brought them to the forefront again.
Anyway, I sort of feel that God must have been laughing with me out there on the shoulder of I-40, as if saying, “Well, Tom, are you learning anything from this?” I’m not yet sure what he was trying to tell me, but I am very sure he was speaking.
When I told this story to my daughter, she said, “Oh, Dad, only you would make such a big theological deal out of just having a flat!”