possible answers to prayer

What God might say to us…….

by Scott Cairns

Your petitions—though they continue to bear

just the one signature—have been duly recorded.

Your anxieties—despite their constant,

.

relatively narrow scope and inadvertent

entertainment value—nonetheless serve

to bring your person vividly to mind.

.

Your repentance—all but obscured beneath

a burgeoning, yellow fog of frankly more

conspicuous resentment—is sufficient.

.

Your intermittent concern for the sick,

the suffering, the needy poor is sometimes

recognizable to me, if not to them.

.

Your angers, your zeal, your lipsmackingly

righteous indignation toward the many

whose habits and sympathies offend you—

.

these must burn away before you’ll apprehend

how near I am, with what fervor I adore

precisely these, the several who rouse your passions.