Lord, be good to us...

There is this guy who I gave a ride home to every now and again.

His name is Lamar.

We were talking a few weeks after the Philly’s won. I’m not usually one who is much for sports, but everyone else around me seems to be. The Philly’s, if you don’t know (or don’t remember), won the World Series.

It was their second World Series win… in 125 (yes, one hundred twenty five) years.
Needless to say, most people remember where they were when the Philly’s won…

Lamar remembered where he was.
He had only just left the hospital…
Right after they pulled the plug on his cousin…
He died from a gunshot wound to the back of the head.

It’s a jarring thought, I think. Few within my age range deal with death in any tangible way. Fewer deal with it as a reference to the reality of the violence practiced by one man to another.

I didn’t think that there was much for me to say.
I don’t think that there’s much for me to say.

For the rest of the ride that night we sat; we would talk but the conversation never came back to Lamar’s cousin. Towards the end, I really felt that the impetus was on me to ask what I could be praying for Lamar’s family (including the obvious loss).

“Just pray that life would be good for us.”

I thought about this on my way home and I prayed for Lamar and his family in North Philadelphia. I thought about my own experience with death – about how, beginning with my Aunt when I was in college, every Christmas and Thanksgiving seemed a little less joyous every year. I thought about how fewer and fewer seemed like they were filled with the joy that usually comes with the holidays. It almost seems as if every year has produced some sort of tragedy (friends who have died, my dad dying, other family members who have died…)

But back to what Lamar asked… isn’t it what we all pray in unnecessary and complex ways?

“Father, I beg you, be good.”

Because frankly, sometimes it doesn’t seem like He is being good to us. Sometimes life doesn’t seem like it allows the room or freedom for goodness to happen. Sometimes (and I really have been wrestling with this in different ways), it just doesn’t seem as if God cares.

Intellectually, I acquiesce to the Apostle’s Creed. I pray the Lord’s Prayer with the Church and I mean every petition (I consciously think about what I’m praying every Sunday with people around the world because I don’t want the word’s to be dead to me). When I speak with God, I ask (in words much less specific), “Lord, be good to me and my family.”

No doubt, things have been good for us in a physical sense.

Though, more often than not, I feel like we have everything we would want…except for a listening ear from God.

God…please be good to us. Amen.