Hard Ground

My boys,

There was a season when I prayed for the same thing so many times that eventually I stopped knowing what else to say.

In the beginning, the prayers were long.

I explained everything to God.

What had happened.

What I needed.

Why I thought it mattered.

What I hoped He would do.

I asked clearly.

Then I waited.

Nothing changed.

So I prayed again.

A little differently this time, as though perhaps I had explained it poorly.

Still nothing.

Days became weeks.

The prayers became shorter.

Please.

Help me.

Show me.

Anything.

Eventually there were nights when I sat there and said almost nothing.

I knew God already knew.

And I was tired of hearing myself ask.

That silence frightened me.

Not His.

Mine.

I had always imagined faith as continuing to pray with confidence.

I did not know what to call sitting before God with no confidence left.

There were mornings I wondered whether I had done something wrong.

Maybe I was asking for the wrong thing.

Maybe the answer had already come and I had missed it.

Maybe I needed more patience.

More discipline.

More faith.

Maybe God was protecting me.

Maybe He was preparing something.

Maybe.

People have many explanations for unanswered prayer.

Some of them may even be true.

But when you are hurting, explanations can feel like someone describing rain while you are drowning.

I don't want to do that to you.

There may come a time when you ask God for something good and do not receive it.

At least not when you ask.

Perhaps not in the way you ask.

Perhaps not at all.

I will not tell you that if you pray correctly, everything will resolve.

I have lived too long to tell you that.

I have stood beside things that did not get repaired.

I have lost things I wanted desperately to keep.

I have watched doors remain closed.

I have asked questions that still do not have answers.

And I still believe in God.

Those two truths live in the same house.

That took me a while to understand.

Faith did not always feel like certainty in that season.

Sometimes faith was simply refusing to leave.

I would sit down to pray without anything new to say.

No beautiful words.

No sudden peace.

No revelation.

Just me.

Still there.

Some nights that was all I had.

I began to understand why farmers sometimes stand over hard ground and wait.

The field can look finished.

Cold.

Unresponsive.

Nothing breaks the surface.

You cannot see what is happening underneath.

And the dangerous temptation is to turn that into a promise.

Something must be growing.

I don't know that.

Sometimes the ground is simply hard.

Sometimes the thing you planted does not grow.

Sometimes you wait and still lose it.

Faith is not pretending otherwise.

Faith is trusting God without requiring Him to explain Himself on my schedule.

I am still learning that.

There are prayers from years ago whose answers I can understand now.

There are others I cannot.

And there are some things I once begged God for that I am now grateful He did not give me.

But I have to be careful with that sentence too.

Because hindsight can make us arrogant.

We look backward from one answered prayer and decide we understand how God works.

I don't.

I know less about that now than I thought I did when I was younger.

Maybe that is growth too.

What I do know is that the silence did something to my faith.

It stripped away the transaction.

I pray.

God gives.

I obey.

Life works.

That is too small.

God is not a machine into which I place good behavior and receive the life I requested.

He is God.

I am not.

There is humility in finally admitting the distance between those two things.

My boys, if you ever enter a season like that, I hope you keep praying.

Angrily, if that is what you have.

Confused.

Quietly.

With tears.

With doubt.

With the same sentence for the thousandth time.

Or with no sentence at all.

Bring God what is actually in you.

Not what you think a faithful man is supposed to sound like.

There were nights when my entire prayer was presence.

His and mine.

I cannot tell you exactly what happened in those nights.

I only know that eventually I stopped measuring every prayer by whether the circumstances changed afterward.

Some did.

Some didn't.

But I kept returning.

Even when the ground was hard.

Especially then.

I love you.

— Baba

Question:

Can you remain with God when you do not understand His silence?

Moral:

Faith is not certainty that we will receive the answer we want. Sometimes it is simply continuing to turn toward God when the ground is hard, the answer has not come, and we have nothing left to say.

This story reflects real experiences and philosophies behind Backyard Brew. It is shared to preserve perspective, faith, and intention.

Author: R. Solace