One picture is worth a thousand words. But one word is worth a thousand pictures as well. Let me draw some pictures and you discern the word. You are riding on a bus through the Andes. The road is as wide as a fat donkey, but little more! The driver speeds like a NASCAR driver, and the drop to your right is a doorway to eternity. How do you feel? Another: you’ve worked hard on a project, but your customer is famous for their fickle response. They could smile or fire you just as easily. It’s some of your best work, but after you’ve hit the send button, what’s in your chest? One more: your oldest is getting married. It’s the first family wedding and nothing within your resources has been spared. It sounded like a great idea to have an outdoor ceremony at the beach, but as the day moves forward, the forecast is foreboding. Everything is set. There’s no turning back. On the morning of, you view dark hail clouds on the horizon. You feel like your situation is ….what?

So, what’s the word? Which adjective matches what you feel or think in those situations? If you haven’t gotten the hint from the title, the word is “precarious.” The dictionary blends the pictures I’ve scripted under one word and defines it as, “dependent on something or someone outside of our control.” If that is where you are, then your situation is precarious. It need not be a dangerous situation. The circumstances could help you as much as they could hurt you. But what makes our context precarious is that we are not in control. We are dependents. So, we feel insecure, unstable, afraid. We don’t like being dependent. We prefer to control, to predict, to live with certainty. By nature, we shy away from precarious living. So now comes the shocker.

We are commanded to live precarious lives because we are commanded to pray. Latin scholars (a dying breed) know that the word “prayer” comes from the word “precarious”. They are the same word. It’s not a linguistic connection I would make on my own, but the sense of both words actually does make sense. When we pray, we are living as dependents. The requests we send heavenward are out of our control! God is driving the bus. God receives the work of our hands. He can send sunshine or He can deluge with hail. We do not dictate to God. We let go of certainty and grip faith with both hands. We live precariously. So, does prayer feel like chance?

It might, if God was capricious. But He isn’t (another Latin word- another blog). God has proved He is worthy of our trust. His heart is shaped like a Father. His love is proved through the Son. By His Spirit, He is as near to me as air. He invites me to live as if everything that matters to me, and even the things that don’t, all rest in His Hands. That is the posture I pray with. What will God do with my prayers? Will there be answers? Can I expect Him to show up? Will my prayers change anything? Will they change me? I cannot offer a guarantee. My situation is precarious. Ironically, that’s the safest circumstance to be in.