The prayer posted by my desk

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.  --- Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"

I've been living with this prayer now for coming up on a year.  One of my professors at Princeton handed out a little card with this meditation on it in my Prayer class.  I started to read it and could hardly make it past the first line.  Here I was, having just moved across the country for more school, and deep down I knew that I had no idea where I was going.  I thought I knew where I was going; God knows I had been seeking where to go.  But I still had to admit that I was full of anxiety because I could not see the road ahead of me.

Following after Jesus Christ is all about trust - and here in my hands, finally, was a prayer of honest trust.  It was honest because, well, "the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so."  And it was a prayer of trust because, "I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you."  The fact is, I can't always know what the road looks like ahead of me.  But I can know that God is simply with me, always.

As life has tossed my family and me back and forth across the country this past year, I have become more confident than ever that God is with us, and will never leave us to face our perils alone.  What's more, when we find ourselves in calm water, there is the peace that God remains with us.  This is not a God of the gaps, who only shows up when things are bad.  We have a God who is ever with us and for us.

That is why this prayer has stayed on my desk for the past year, because it is a prayer I can always pray.  Even now, as I am finally beginning a PhD program and I can leave all the anxiety and questioning behind, I pray this prayer.  I still have to admit to myself that I really don't know where I'm going.  So, I still seek God, and trust that my desire to please him is enough.  There is nothing greater than the peace that comes from allowing God to be God.