One day, a young girl saw her little brother stuffing himself into a huge makeshift paper envelope covered in postage stamps. “What are you doing?!” she asked.
“I want to go to the moon, so I’m going to mail myself there,” he replied.
“That’s such a dumb idea!” she said. “No matter how big an envelope you make, it’ll never work. You should know that!”
The boy thought about it for a while, then nodded sadly.
The sister continued, “You need at least two envelopes; otherwise, how will you get home?!”
One of the challenges of prayer is the gulf between what we think we want and what would actually help us. Someone who earnestly prays that his son be better at sports would probably be better served by the wisdom to discern and support what his son was good at. Many who long for romantic love get better results by finding personal satisfaction and fortitude in solitude . . . which, ironically, can make them more attractive and worthwhile as potential partners when love does present itself. And so on.
Our frequent inability to think outside the box often leads us to mental dead ends, where we fixate on what we think will solve our problems, to the exclusion of true peace. An extreme example of this is in today’s first reading, from Tobit. It deals with two people – Tobit and Sarah – who are so at the end of their ropes that they pray for death.
These prayers are heartbreaking in their rawness and earnestness. Tobit bemoans, “It is better for me to die than to live, because I have heard insulting calumnies, and I am overwhelmed with grief.” Sarah cries out, “It is far better . . . to beg the Lord to have me die, so that I need no longer live to hear such insults.”
And yet – like the children with the giant envelopes – both are wrong. Tobit and Sarah pray for death because they can’t conceive of a better solution, a better answer, a better blessing for which to pray.
Fortunately, the Lord is smarter than we are. He knows what would bring us peace and happiness, even if we do not. The Lord does not grant their prayers of death – not because He didn’t hear their prayers, or because He could not grant their wish, or because He does not care about them. Quite the opposite!
At that very time, the prayer of these two suppliants was heard in the glorious presence of Almighty God. So Raphael was sent to heal them both . . .
The rest of the Book of Tobit shows the miraculous and amazing reversals for Sarah and Tobit, whereupon their lives are made immeasurably better than they could have conceived. It’s been said that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and a prayer of death is no better. Fortunately, God can see beyond our preconceptions, our shortsightedness, our lack of imagination.
This insight is on full display in today’s Gospel reading from Mark, where some Sadducees ask Jesus who will be the husband of a woman who marries seven brothers, when the resurrection comes. Like a child trying to mail himself to the moon, the question betrays a basic understanding of the ways of the universe, and Jesus sets them straight: “When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven.”
So set were the Sadducees on proving Christ wrong that they didn’t see their own lack of understanding. So set were Tobit and Sarah on having their suffering end that they didn’t see the foolishness of their prayers. Fortunately, God is infinitely smarter than us. Indeed, I could see Jesus addressing Tobit and Sarah’s prayers of death using the same words as he used on the Sadducees: “He is not God of the dead but of the living. You are greatly misled.”
Let us turn always – in all ways – to God! But let us keep humble minds and hearts, willing and able to let the Lord work as He will to bring us ultimately into the Kingdom of Christ. We have wants and needs, and we think we know what will bring us peace . . . but God’s smarter than us all. Putting our trust in Him is the smartest thing we can do.
