A Postmodern Prayer

God, as I read and talk with people in my generation, there seems to be this great ambivalence about you. It seems as if we’ve lost you on a walk through the forest in thick fog. Sometimes we are almost certain that you are there walking beside us or behind us - maybe even putting a gentle, affectionate hand on our backs. Other times, it seems as if you’ve never been there and the thick fog has been playing tricks on us all along.
Why is that? Why do we wander in and out of awareness of you? Why does faith come and go? Why do so many who grew up in the church and had clear experiences of you - or at least every opportunity to experience you - why do we later in life - as we grow up and enter adulthood - why do we doubt or lose faith or wander unanchored or feel overwhelmed and lost in the fog?
Are we casualties of postmodernism? Are the gears of centuries crunching our souls between the cracks of tectonic era shifts? That’s what I’m telling people. Is it true that so many of us are innocent casualties of some huge philosophical traffic accident?
What can be done? What should we do? Are we applying first-aid like EMS personnel? Are we working in a rehab hospital teaching people how to walk, to eat, to write again? Is there something we can do to keep people out of the way of the colliding trains? Must we all lose an arm or leg or eye? Is this a necessary part of an honest faith journey in these kaleidoscopic times?
Is there no vaccine, no preventative medicine, no way to lessen the pain or to lessen the fall? Must we be boggled by the complexity before we can search out a new simplicity?
Why are the answers so hard to find these days?
Why do the questions feel so much more ready on the lips, so much more true to the mind?
How long will this last?
Where will this end?
Where will we all go from here, and is that where you want to take us?