Bubbles

I knew that I could help God out. I just needed to take some control.
Or at least that is what I tried to do. I know God is awesome, and of His power there can be no doubt. So when I asked God to let me help Him with His job (you know, running the universe and all), I figured he might put me in the Kingdom equivalent of the mail room. I thought he would have me sort out the Dear Jesus letters from the Dear Resident letters. I guess I would have been fine with that, but there was something in me that wanted to do more. That’s how I came up with my brilliant idea to help God.
I asked God for a moment of His time, and when He came I laid out my plan.
“Lord,” I started, “I know your job as God must be very difficult. You have so much to care for, so much Grace to hand out over and over, and so very many people that are constantly coming to you for this and that.” Then I stood up a little straighter and proudly pronounced my intention. “I would like to be your personal secretary!”
God just stood there, looking at me quizzically. As the seconds passed with no response, I began to get nervous. “I mean, it would be at your pleasure of course,” I murmured reluctantly. “I would do whatever you needed done.”God continued to look at me, and just as I thought I was going to pass out from the tension rising in the back of my skull, He spoke.
“You wish to help me out, do you?” God said. “That sounds like an outstanding idea!”
I was very surprised that He was so given to the idea, but I went with it. “Thank you so much, I will….” But before I could finish with my lavish thanks, He interrupted me.
“You will start immediately. I have just the place for you.”
God took me to His side and in the blink of an eye we were standing in a large, beige room with no doors or windows. It was very bright inside, yet there was no obvious reason for the light. I saw no lamps or other lighting, prompting me wonder aloud how is was so bright.
God did not answer, but instead began to instruct me on my job. “This is where you will be working.” I looked around, and as there was absolutely nothing in the room, I queried again, this time asking what exactly it was I was going to do in this place. Before God answered, the room suddenly and without warning started filling with bubbles floating through the air. These were very similar to the kind one might blow from a child’s bubble bottle. How they got there was unclear, yet there must have been hundreds of them. I reached out my finger to touch one, expecting it to explode into nothingness. To my surprise, instead of popping upon contact with my finger it fell to the floor with a thud, seemingly taking on weight. God bent down to pick it up, and handed it to me.
It was much heavier than I would have imagined when it was floating, much like the ball of a snow globe.
“This is your job,” He said, picking up the bubble and handing it to me. “Inside each of these are the prayers of my people. Look inside.” I held up the ball and could see words scrolled across the inside. I read them aloud, surprised to find that this one contained the prayer of a man for his wife. I looked back up at God, and before I could speak He continued.
“It is your job to sort these prayers. I want you to decide which prayers are most important, second most important and so on, so that I may get to them in the appropriate time. Stack them accordingly, and when I return I will collect the piles.”
I was stunned at the request. I felt that God had given me a job of much greater importance than I could have even dreamed. I had about a hundred more questions, but God left before I had the chance to utter a one.
I was thrilled to be given such an assignment. I was going to make sure that prayers got to God in the order of their importance. I thought excitedly about how great it was going to be for those that had the greatest prayers to get theirs answered in such a quick manner, and to know that I had a part to play in that timeliness! It was going to be smooth and precise if I had anything to say about it, and thanks to God I finally did.
But I had to get to work quickly. It seemed that even in the minute that I was congratulating myself the number of bubbles had doubled. So I started with the one in my hand. I decided that a man praying for his wife had to be important, so I put it on one side of the room. I then reached up to grab another bubble. I brought it to my eyes and read about a mother praying for her sick son in a remote region that had little medical aid. I instantly knew that this was important, and placed it in that first pile.
Grabbing another, I read about a little boy who lost his dog, and was praying for its safe return. It brought a tear to my eye to think of that boy and the sadness he felt. Yet I knew that it did not measure up to the previous prayers, so I created a second pile.
I read another from a single lady that felt she was very blessed in life, but was praying for a husband. She seemed otherwise happy and content with life, so I figured she wouldn’t mind waiting a little longer. God would surely want to read this, but it needed to go in the second pile with the lost puppy.
A bubble floated past my nose and I picked it out of the air right before it hit me. It was the prayer of a high school student asking God for help on his big test. I remembered praying such a prayer when I was in a similar situation. I also remembered that if I had studied more the night prior to the test, then perhaps I wouldn’t have had to pray as hard as I did! I figured that this kid would just have to deal with it on his own, and learn the importance of studying. I started a third pile with his prayer.
By this time the room was teeming with so many bubbles floating through the air that it was getting hard for me to avoid hitting them with my head. I started to accidentally brush up against some, causing them to fall to the ground with a thud. I started scrambling to get those read and sorted before I went back to the ones in the air. I raced around from end to end, and the piles were growing.
As I raced, the air grew thick with bubbles. I was not clearing any space, and if anything I was falling behind. I was reminded of the I Love Lucy episode involving the chocolate candy conveyor belt, with me in the role of Lucy. But God had given me a job, and I was going to make Him proud.
Time kept going, and I worked myself ragged. The piles were growing exponentially with each passing hour. However, I soon realized, to my amazement, that I was actually making progress. The room was starting to clear of bubbles, but the floor was getting crammed.
Throughout, I was making difficult determinations on where prayers should go. What I thought was going to be only three major piles for prayers turned into twelve piles. Admittedly, I wasn’t giving each prayer a thorough read. I had to start glancing and looking for certain words to make my determination. I started to regret that I might have accidentally put something with a sickness or a death in a lower importance pile. But I put that out of my mind, knowing that I was doing my hardest and that God was counting on me.
I don’t know exactly how much time passed as I did the job. If you asked my feet, it felt like years, and if you asked my mind there was such a blur of requests that it felt like only minutes. But I did eventually wind down, and looked around at the piles I had created. On the one side of the room stood a stack that towered over me, and I remembered having to throw some of the requests to the top when it got too high. That was the pile that I had started with that kid’s test prayer. On the other side of the room was a pile half the size, which I had started with that very first prayer of the husband for his wife. In between were piles of varying degrees, and I finally felt a sense of pride and accomplishment in what I had done. I dropped down, sitting in the middle of the room with my victories all around me.
That’s when God appeared. “Almost done, I see,” He stated, looking at me.
“I am done, Lord,” I said. “Look around, all sorted and ready for you!” I knew He was going to be pleased with the work I had done.
God looked up towards the ceiling of the room, and pointed. “Just one left,” he said, plucking it from the air.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see that one,” I exclaimed. “I’ll take it!” God looked inside the bubble and took it to himself. “That’s ok,” He said. “I will keep this. It looks like you have been very busy today.”
“Yes, Lord!” I was so excited, that through my weariness I jumped up and started explaining all that I had done. I pointed to the first pile. “This pile is the most important, you’ll want to get to this first, then over here there is….” And that is when it happened. Just as I was going to run through the list of piles, God raised His right hand and in an instant all the bubbles in all the piles raised into the air. They floated there, not in the perfect piles I had made, but jumbled, mixed as much as when I had first seen them. They hovered over us for a moment, and then shot into the body of the Lord. The room was instantly empty, and silence abounded.
That was a silence that I wasn’t going to let live. “What just happened?!?!” I screamed, indignant that my days worked had been wiped out in an instance. “I worked all day to put them in order, and you just wasted it!”
The Lord ignored my fury, and spoke. “Is the prayer of one of my people any less or more important than that of another? Have I not already heard the prayers, even before you began today?”
I was dumbfounded. Why would He then make me go through this process? Why would He waste my time? Why did He want me to choose which prayers are more important?
But it wasn’t Him. I was the one who wanted to decide. I was the one who wanted to help God, and to make decisions of what was more important and what was less. I was the one who insisted that God needed help. I was the one who would do better than God.
I fell down and started to clench my fists, angry that God didn’t stop me and furious at myself for being such a fool. But God didn’t let me languish.
“Son,” He said, pointing into the far corner of the room. “There is something you need to see.” I looked up and saw a pile of thousands of bubbles that had not gone with God. I thought I had remembered all the piles I had made, but this one was so large and stacked so neatly and perfectly in the corner. I didn’t ever remember making it nor did I remember it being there when I first showed up, and I surely would not have missed it.
I ran over to it, and took the highest bubble I could reach. Bringing it to my face, I read the prayer. Immediately, I dropped the bubble to the ground. I started reaching at others in the pile, and one after one, consumed the prayers inside. Suddenly, I was filled with fear at what I had seen.
“How is this possible?” I cried to God. “What is the meaning of this?”
“These are yours,” He said. “These are the prayers that you have offered up to me over the years that you never really thought were worthy of my attention. You started this pile as a young boy, when you believed the lie that there were just some requests that even though you pray them, really don’t meet my standards. They wait here because you haven’t given them to me yet. I would love to have them.”
I knew exactly what He was saying. All those prayers over the years that I might have thought or even spoken, but never really gave over to God. I was holding on so tight to those things that I thought God wouldn’t care about that I never realized just how much I was holding back from Him. He wanted all of my prayers, and He valued them alongside the prayers of the most desperate and brokenhearted. For by holding back from God, I was denying who He is.
“Take them,” I begged. “I want you to have them. I need you to have them.”
I knew that I could help God out. I just needed to let go.