What if you prayed?

a poem

Photo by Olivia Snow on Unsplash

I know how well you can speak

I’ve heard your eloquence

Felt the urgency

In your practiced monologues

In your elongated diatribes.

I know how you like to spin vibes,

In soliloquies,

And harmonies,

To hide all the darkness inside. 

You speak to popular philosophies, 

Reframe all your anxieties,

Flip the flow on your insecurities, 

Speak what you want.

So you can be self-made

But you didn’t make yourself.

So what if you just prayed? 

I know your friends,

I’ve heard them too.

They’re not so wise,

They fix their eyes on this world,

And its addictions.

Its fixations are flawed,

In a fictitious reimagining of God,

In the image of man.

They’ve pledged themselves

To the wrong things

Idols they’ve made with their own hands.

So what if you just prayed? 

What if you fell on your face?

Disembarked from the pedestal 

On which you’ve set yourself

A manmade throne of foolishness

What if you flung yourself into grace?

Into God’s arms of mercy

Open wide, waiting for you

What if you abandoned 

Your unhealthy coping strategies 

And ran into the actual throne room

What if you sought His face? 

What if you first dwelt in the secret place? 

What if you knelt before the King?

(Not the one of your own making)

But the King of all Kings

The Almighty God,

Who existed before

The foundations of this earth.

He is eternal, over everything.

What if instead of internal reckonings

Pondering phrases

Tossing them over and over

In a circular rumination 

Like a wash cycle on the wrong setting

That you keep forgetting and restarting 

                          And restarting 

                                    And restarting

                                            And going in circles... 

What if you stopped spinning?

What if you stopped forgetting

To pray

—Anna Williams