My son had been practicing the Mozart piano concerto for three months. He’d put hundreds of hours into it. But when it came time for the competition, he made just a few mistakes. But they were enough to drop him down from the top two prizes to an honorable mention.
The piece of music was still so wonderful you could feel the audience leaning toward the piano during the quieter parts. And they burst into applause when the concerto was done. But it wasn’t enough. My son came up short.
And when we sat down afterward, he said, “I prayed. But God let me down.”
Ouch. Those were tough words to hear. But the truth is we often feel that way whether it’s true or not.
The Psalms are filled with prayers that sound similar. “God, I didn’t give up on you. Why did you give up on me?”
I think the problem we all face — psalmists included — is that our perspective on our lives is so skewed by proximity. We inhabit our lives and can’t see ourselves and our circumstances with any objectivity. It’s like putting your eyeball up close to the water and expecting to see the vastness of the ocean. It’s like putting the water on the stove to boil and expecting to taste a finished meal.
There are two things which give us some perspective: The views of others and time. When we can see ourselves and our circumstances through the eyes of others or from the distance that time brings, our losses start to fit within the story of our lives. They move from being the only thing we can see, filling our hearts and minds with pain, and they become part of the plot that makes up our life stories.
Years ago, I led a small class through St. Augustine’s Confessions. It’s an amazing book. It’s believed to be the first memoir ever written. But even more amazing that that, it’s prayed memoir. As he wrote it, Augustine was praying his life back to God. So, as I taught the class and the group moved through the book week by week, we’d take time to pray back our lives to God along with Augustine.
All of the people in the class were decades older than I was and all had stories of living through the Great Depression. One talked of packing up all their possessions into their station wagon and driving West in hopes of a new job, a new home, a new life. Looking back on their lives, they had no trouble seeing the hand of God guiding them even through those dark times. Of course, they were kids back then and it was all a big adventure. I’m sure their unemployed and desperate parents were at their wits end as they tried to figure out what to do with empty wallets, empty gas tanks, and empty stomachs.
One man talked about something he’d suffered as an adult which he and God had never reconciled. He’d been a professor of accounting at a major university. He was at the top of his game and had some ideas for how the discipline might be improved. But he was met with fierce resistance. In fact, he was so strenuously opposed that he lost his job. Not only that, the rest of his department let others know he wasn’t someone other university departments should hire. And no one did. He was blacklisted. His friends and colleagues had turned on him and it felt as if God had done so as well.
Fortunately, he had a couple former students who had become accounting professors at a small college in a backwater community. They needed a new department head and based on their recommendation, he got the job. As far as he was concerned, his high-flying career was mired in mud.
So, I asked, what was your life like at this new univeristy?
“Well,” he said, “I had more time for my wife and family which was really nice. There was a small college orchestra and we got season tickets to all their performances. And I took up oil painting, which I’d always wanted to try. Oh, and those changes in accounting I’d wanted to make at the previous university got made in my new department. Eventually, they became adopted nationwide.”
“What about your old department?”
“They never changed,” he replied. “Eventually, it was closed down. They’d gone from the highest in the field to nonexistent within a decade.”
“So, your life became more balanced and whole. And you were able to make the changes you’d been wanting to make?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. That sure sounds like the hand of God was on you and especially in the loss of your job.”
He sat there in stunned silence. After a half minute, he finally spoke.
“God was with me. How did I never notice that?”