On Tuesday last week, my flight to Jamaica was canceled. It took me the whole day to resolve, and I got so frustrated. Finally, I received some good news—my new flight would depart at 6:15 a.m. on Wednesday. But then that meant waking up very early at 3 a.m.
I accepted it, but my wife would tell you—I am not an early bird.
When I got to the airport, I received another message from Deacon Clifford—I would need to prepare for a three-hour drive from the airport after getting to Kingston around 1.30 pm. It immediately dawned on me that I would be traveling for nearly 12 hours without a break. What a gift! Then things got worse. When I got to Kingston, I discovered my bag was tempered with, and my clothes were missing.
I became so frustrated—more than that, I was upset. I began to wonder what exactly was troubling me. Was it the canceled flight, the tight connections, missing clothes or something else?
As I sat in the car, I began to reflect on prayer. How do you pray when you are overwhelmed with stress? Does it even matter to pray in such moments?
In times of grief, we cry. We mourn. We despair. It is what we naturally do, don’t we? Rarely do we find a single moment to pray. Prayer feels like something we can only do when we are comfortable—when life is calm and our hearts are at peace—it is something for moments when we feel at home with ourselves. I must confess–prayer is easy when my life is at ease too. But when darkness surrounds us, prayer becomes so difficult and unbearable.
I am not sure how to feel about what is happening in the world today. How do you pray when you feel like cursing? How do you pray when you see destruction all around us? Is cursing at those who make destructive decisions not enough? Surely, the mouth that curses cannot be the same mouth that speaks to the Divine—can it? Perhaps not.
Yet, Scripture does not prevent us from holding this tension. Rage and prayer can coexist, I still believe. Yes, I do. The psalmists and the prophets point us to this very point. At times, they spoke with fierce anger against injustice while still acknowledging that only God has the final word.
The so-called “cursing Psalms” continue to trouble many Christians, but they reveal something important—the complex nature of the human heart before its Creator. In prayer, our unspoken frustrations, fears, anger—even our curses—are laid bare before God. It is God who responds to them. In the end, it is not our will that prevails, but God’s.
We may come before God with anger, even wishing harm in our pain, yet God understands the depths from which those emotions arise. More often than not, God meets us there with grace—helping us to see not only the brokenness of the world, but also our own limitedness. In the process, we grow to see the world with divine grace.
I invite you this Lent: pray, even in your daily struggles. Let God hear your fears and frustrations—after all, God already knows them. Do not let your feelings and doubts keep you from prayer.
Even in the darkness, and doubts, God is present.
Just pray. God, who is always ready to listen, will hear you. Just pray.
Join us for this Saturday for our Retreat and this Sunday for Palm Sunday. Come and pray with us!
Sunday
From the E-Crier of March 26, 2026. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter.