I’ve got no idea who went ahead and just pulled out a Sharpie marker and circled a bunch of dates on the calendar, but there it is, dates with Sharpie ink ringing around them like circling vultures.

Dates for doctor appointments and drop-dead deadlines and dream days that have sort of been lifelines… and there on the calendar too: Easter coming.

But who in the world knows what disaster could befall us around the corner and what tomorrow even holds? 

“It’s kinda feels like — our whole life is up in the air.”

I turn and whisper it to the Farmer like I’m looking for relief of my own.

“Life is always kinda sorta supposed to be up in the air, isn’t it?” He murmurs it in the dimming room,  like he’s turned on a light.

“Yeah—maybe…” I try to smile. “The abundantly good life is supposed to feel kind of up in the air.”

He finds my hand.

Life’s about being like Jesus, — pulling on the skin of Jesus —  here on earth — and then about pulling out all the stops against the powers of the air.  

“For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12

I try to still all this whirl of worries within. Just listen to him and I and all just breathing in the quiet…

Prayer is never an acceptable way to simply accept the status quo — but real prayer, without exception, moves us to take the status of a warrior, who fights against the insidious dark until it finally accepts defeat, in the face of glorious justice.

The real good life is meant to be up in the air — because life’s real battles are being fought up in the air — up in the heavenlies. 

And yet: Prayer is never an acceptable way to simply accept the status quo — but real prayer, without exception, moves us to take the status of a warrior, who fights against the insidious dark until it finally accepts defeat, in the face of glorious justice.

There’s a text message from our son: “Can you pray for me? Please?”

There’s a friend who I’d bleed for, who looks numbs and empty these days, who is painfully going through the brave motions because you’ve just got to do the next hard and holy thing even when it feels like it’s not changing anything.

And there’s an aching world of hurting heartbreak out there, and our brave kids are in the centre of it, and our dreams and our hopes and our futures and our communities and our countries are hanging in the balance through it, and there is a war in the heavenlies and the farming man laying beside me is believing it:  

If our prayer lives aren’t, as they say, up in the air, where the real battle begins, our lives on the ground, lose ground. But if our prayer lives never become actual boots on the ground, effecting real change to usher in more the Kingdom of God, then our prayers make a mockery of God.

I can hear a clock ticking —  this is the thrum of things:

The more indifferent we are to prayer, the less God’s power makes any difference in our lives. And the less we let prayers cause us to actually change and live differently, the more we actually profane the name of God.

Prayer isn’t the merely least we can do, prayer is the most we can do, but unless our prayers beg God to break open the eyes of our hearts, to break us away from our own self-protection to protect the least of these, unless our hearts break with what breaks His, which is always the slaying of the most vulnerable in all kinds of ways, unless our prayers beg God to somehow change and transform us — then our prayers are but parody.

If our prayers don’t cause us to do actually live differently — then we aren’t actually praying, we’re playing.

The more indifferent we are to prayer, the less God’s power makes any difference in our lives. And the less we let prayers cause us to actually change and live differently, the more we actually profane the name of God.

There’s light out the window, light cutting it’s way through the dark — and there’s the way forward:

When we are moved to truly pray, God moves us to truly live a new way.

Our prayers

makes us slayers

and culture-changers.

No weapon is more formidable than prayer to slay the dark & the demons — and if our prayers don’t slay our own deceptive apathy, we’re actually being formed by the dark & the demons. If our prayers don’t move us to act — is God active in us?

Prayer’s the weapon we wield to make everything else we do survive fire. 

I dare to believe in strange and heartbreaking days like these:

She who commits to pray,

she slays —

all kinds demons, within her, before even around her —

and she commits to living a different way.

So go ahead, let our life be all up in the air. I can hear the wind outside the window, see the night sky’s stretching far above trees, like a shadowed battlefield, and I try to remember to breathe, to rest:

Prayer’s the weapon we wield to make everything else we do survive fire. But if our prayers don’t cause us to do actually live differently — then we aren’t actually praying, we’re playing.

Work for all your worth for change in this world for Christ, yet never neglect to make time to pray to Christ for this world. He is the lifeblood of all prayer, all work, all being, all communion. There’s moonlight catching the cross on the bedroom wall across from the window.

The calendar squares say we’re moving toward through the final days of Lent.

What had Andrew Murray said? 

“Prayer is reaching out after the unseen; fasting is letting go of all that is seen and temporal. Fasting helps express, deepen, confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, even ourselves, to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God.”

What of earth do I need to let go of,  fast from, sacrifice completely, to reach for what is unseen, to reach for the One more life-giving than air? 

I lay there in the night quiet for a long time…   letting go, letting go of self-interest, letting go of self- righteousness, letting go of self-protection. Praying, praying, praying — until things within me change, because I’m done with playing.

Rain’s falling, splattering across the window…

I’d heard it once from an old farmer’s wife, how an eagle never takes a snake on the ground. An eagle always tears into the reptile with its talons and flies it into the sky.

Because an eagle knows not to try to conquer the snake on the ground, because the eagle knows:

The way you win is to change the actual battlefield.

Take every battle to the air in prayer — and God will take over your battles on earth. And we are only really praying for great good in the world when we are willing to do whatever it takes for the greater good to come through us.

That’s why the eagle flings the snake into the air.

A snake has no strength, no power, no way when tossed into the air.  Dashed upon rocks, the snake’s food for the victorious bird. When you do your battle in prayer with the principalities in the air — and within your own soul — there’s winning on earth. 

I exhale in the darkness — I didn’t even know I was holding my breath.

Take every battle to the air in prayer — and God will take over your battles on earth. And we are only really praying for great good in the world when we are willing to do whatever it takes for the greater good to come through us.

In the quieted, dark stillness, I almost say it aloud anyway, say it to all the questions about all the things, say what the universe knows:

“A life up in the air — can be a life up to the best things, because it changes things on earth .”

You can see from the rain spattered on the window — that the wind’s shifted toward the east.

There is a changing of everything —

when breath becomes prayer.

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Are you desperate for more than just a way through, but The Way through?