I have never really felt comfortable catching buses. It is probably that as a child I never had to use them, and by the time I was a young adult and working but had not yet passed my driving test and had to use them they worried me. Then of course there were the odd times visiting places such as Harlow, Chesterfield or Wolverhampton and the terror felt of not knowing which stop to get off at.
It is a miracle that I managed to navigate on buses, and on a Greyhound bus in America alone without getting lost or having a panic attack; but that really is another story.
Anyway, the problem I find with buses is that although there is a timetable, they are wont to either go early, or arrive late so you never quite know if you have arrived on time and they have left, or if they have yet to appear. Personally, I feel airplanes and trains are much less confusing and there are fewer occasions of their leaving early without me.
Even after using buses for about a year they were never a means of transport that I felt at ease with; and I discovered that there were even days when they never arrived at all.
I understand for those living in Ipswich, or another large town they may not have the anxiety that I feel around buses, as they developed an understanding of them from an early age.
However, sometimes I feel when we pray, and spend time listening for God’s voice we expect him to speak to us in our time frame. We sit quietly, we listen, we have an expectation that he will speak in our time, when we want to hear him and feel ready to do so.
Yet so often God remains silent, he chooses not to answer our plea for guidance, or heal our pain, or provide the new job, or the answer to our problems in the time frame we want. We learn to wait, to know that he desires to hear all our prayers, and that he will answer us, but he will do so in his time and not in ours.
A prayer
Lord God, we give thanks that you yearn to hear our prayers and for us to open our hearts to you, with all our fears and anxieties.
We thank you that you respond when the time is right and ask us to keep looking and searching for your answers.
Amen