“O LORD, rebuke me not in your anger,
nor discipline me in your wrath.

 Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing;
heal me, O LORD, for my bones are troubled.

 My soul also is greatly troubled.
But you, O LORD—how long?” (Psa. 6:1–3)

If you are looking for a way to annoy a teenager (and really, who isn’t?  It’s so much fun!), one of the best ways is to read a text they send you and not respond to it.  This might be a trick that only works on iPhones, but here’s the basic idea.  iPhones can send a status update for texts sent to other iPhones, letting the sender know when the message was delivered and read (you can see an example in the picture, look below the text bubble that says “on”).  It absolutely drives my daughter crazy when I read her text messages and don’t reply promptly.  It upsets her because she knows I’ve received her message, and I’ve even read it, but I haven’t yet answered her.  The first time she called me out on it, she exclaimed, “Dad, you left me on ‘read’!” I had no idea what she meant until she explained it to me.  While that time was accidental, I now do it all the time, just to annoy her.

The thing is, though, I always respond to her messages, but I don’t always do so via text.  I might wait until the next time I see her.  I might choose to respond with actions instead of words.  I might respond to the text message with an email or a phone call.  Sometimes, I’ll respond through her mother or brother.  I don’t actually do this to annoy her (most of the time), but because I think those might be better or more efficient ways to respond in the moment.

This has been on my mind lately, because I think there are a lot of times when it feels like God has left us on ‘read.’ We pray, but we don’t hear an answer… or maybe the better way to say it is that we don’t receive an answer from Him in the way we would prefer.  If my daughter texts me, she would like a text message back.  Promptly.  Sometimes, God answers our prayers in very different ways from what we might prefer or desire.  Sometimes, He answers our prayers weeks, months, sometimes even years after we lift them up to Him.  We know God hears our prayers, the Psalms remind us of that all the time (see Psalm 3:4, 4:3 17:6, 55:17, and 116:1), but it seems like God leaves us on ‘read’ when He doesn’t answer our prayers when or how we would like.

But God does, in fact, always hear our prayers.  And He always answers them.  Our task is to trust in Him and wait patiently for His answer.  His timing is always perfect, and His methods are precisely what we need.  The question is, when God seemingly leaves us on ‘read,’ will we continue to trust in Him?

I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry.  He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the LORD. — Psalm 40:1–3 

Blessings,

Rev. David Garrison