By Maria Sermersheim
Meditatione Ignis
In this age of communication, there is a general expectation of swift response rates, because texts, emails and other social media operate instantaneously. We adjust those expectations for each person depending on their personalities, habits and our closeness to them. However, for almost all of us, when we get busy, we go “incommunicado,” replying much more slowly, sometimes sitting on some texts or emails for weeks or even months. The most essential messages are still exchanged, but many friends and conversations of interest fall by the wayside in favor of focusing our energy where it is most needed, on whatever are the most urgent tasks ahead. After some time, we return to these conversations with apologies and updates, and our friends understand, as they find themselves in the same situation at other times.
I confront these phases of going “incommunicado” not infrequently as a graduate student, but I realized that recently, I invested my energies so narrowly into my tasks that I even failed to communicate as usual with God — and that is one line of communication that we must always protect.
The payoff of delayed communication should be greater focus on urgent deadlines and greater investment in demanding tasks; the point of the longer response rate is not to ignore a friend, but to invest in some high priority project. The only problem, as I saw lately, is when we forget that God is not in the same category as friends; nor is God in the same category as passing projects. No, paying homage to the Lord of the Universe is the highest priority and a daily necessity, and our response rate in the communication of prayer should not be deferred, no matter how busy we are.
Jesus retreated from the crowds and even from his disciples multiple times to pray in a more secluded place. On one hand, this is analogous to our retreats from communication: he retreated from noise to focus on a more pressing task. But on the other hand, his example makes it clear that prayer is not among those things to be left behind when we are busy — because Jesus did not retreat from praying, he retreated in order to pray. As he taught in the Sermon on the Mount, we should not worry about what we are to eat, what we are to wear or anything else — so we should not even worry too fiercely about how we are to meet our deadlines. Instead, we must “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given [us] besides” (Matthew 6:33). Let us recommit to our prayer lives, even in the midst of unsent texts and other deadlines, for we must not delay communication with the source of life, the Lord himself.
Maria Sermersheim is pursuing her doctorate in biblical studies at the University of Notre Dame and is a graduate of Reitz Memorial High School. She welcomes emails at msermersheim@evdio.org.