August Advent, part 15: “at” not “to” and “U2”

Sometimes lyrics in songs catch my attention, not so much because of what they actually say or mean, yet how I hear them in the moment.

This happened to me yesterday while on my way to meet a friend - and it repeated over and over while I drove home.

The lyric from a U2 song says, “… you didn’t notice I was there because you were talking at me and not to me…”

The meaning of the song aside, this line made me consider me about how I approach prayer sometimes.

I wrote a little blog about prayer a week or two ago, and in it I expressed how prayer can catch us up into God’s bigger plan. We can gain perspective. And to quote C.S. Lewis again, Prayer “doesn’t change God, it changes me…”

I believe this can be true when I am talking to God and with God. Talking “to” can imply a mutual conversation, a relationship building moment.

Sometimes I wonder if I don’t sense a response because I don’t even notice that God is with me in midst of my blathering. At times I can get so caught up in talking “at” God about friends, family, circumstances, and situations that I don’t even notice God’s presence.

Another line from this U2 song says, “It’s the little things that can give you away.”

Talking “at” and not “to” reveals my self-importance and selfishness, it demonstrates my need to tell God how I think God should be acting. It exposes my anxiety. In this revelation, though, I also become aware that another way - a better way - exists. I remember that God cares, that God works for good, that God listens, and that God is present. I remember that God wants to be in relationship with creation and even me.

And God’s patience and constant love throughout my “at” moments reminds me of something else… Grace, about which U2 also has an amazing song, yet those thoughts will have to wait for another time.