Jurassic Prayer

Jurassic Prayer By Mark D. Stucky We asked our preschooler to pray, and with dinner plates before us and our hands folded, he paused in silence and then roared in imitation of a wounded, angry dinosaur. We all laughed at the incongruous “prayer” from the tiny portrayal of a monstrous T-Rex, but was the inadvertent theology as inappropriate as first thought? Religious roars of pain and anger permeate the book of Job, the story of an exemplary man wounded by undeserved catastrophes. In anger, Job roared at judgmental comforters. In anguish, he roared at the world and at God. And God roared back from a whirlwind and later restored Job’s many blessings. When wounded by anguish or anger and longing for or fearing death, good therapy is roaring at God and baring one’s soul’s darkest depths, for God, through crucifixion, felt our pain and God, through resurrection, roared good news that monstrous Death dies defeated. And God will wipe away our tears at the final end of earthly evil’s roaring and the new beginning of celestial singing. (First published in Agape Review, 11 July 2022. See also my poem "Bringing Heaven to Earth" and my visual poem “Haiga for the Heavenbound.”) (Image by user1457424776 on Pixabay.com.)