freedom and swiss goat-maids

I was part of a discussion about prayer, and the purpose and effect of it, and the purposes of God in the lives of people.

Seemingly randomly, I saw Heidi sitting on the shelf.    It had been long since I read it.    So I thought "It's about time I sat down and read Heidi."

Wow!   Nestled into a nice story about a girl who needs a home and finds one is some hefty theology, expressed explicitly by the protagonist herself.    And Heidi's theology is, in my opinion, spot-on:  it's when we're *not* in communion with God that He gives us what we want — all the fix-its we desire in life — and He lets us go our own way, out of communion with Him, which of course leads to disaster, fix-its or not.    When we *are* in communion, He then may withhold what we want and what we actually asked for, because He has something better.

So the very fact of asking Him for a fix-it may indeed have the opposite effect of what we intended, because by asking Him we are getting into communication with Him, and if we're listening we may realize that He has a higher purpose or a different direction, and will enact in in the lives of people who are in communion with Him.    Others He allows to go their own way.

This squares with my experience of prayer, and it's great comfort to me, because then it doesn't become as strict a cause-and-effect thing as we may think.

Maybe the key is for enough of us to get into communion with God on whatever issues are before us.    He will then do something greater than fixing things in whatever way we may have preconceived.