We have always asked for so much under the sun, beneath the clouds, and across the seas. We ask for wealth, children, beautiful homes, and cars of our choosing. We pray for success, abundance, fertile lands, and lives filled with comfort. But I often wonder: where do all these requests go, and what becomes of the prayers we send into the heavens?
In our pursuit of these desires, we have sacrificed the children of our mothers. We have taken the lives of strangers, people with whom we share no personal ties, and found ways to silence our guilt simply because their suffering does not touch us directly. We have shed blood, caused tears, and left wounds upon the very earth from which we seek our daily bread and water.
And yet, after all this, we still lift our hands to the heavens and ask for rain. We ask for the soil to remain fertile, for our crops to flourish, and for the land to provide for us. We ask for life, even as we destroy it. We ask for abundance, even as we contaminate the sources of our survival. We pray for peace while creating violence, and for blessings while destroying what sustains us.
I have often wondered: who is this being, this power, this creation that we continue to abuse, yet which never ceases to provide us with what we need beneath the same sun?
Some call it God. Others call upon different names, spirits, or powers. Our beliefs may differ, and our prayers may be spoken in different languages, but the requests are remarkably similar. We all seek life, security, prosperity, love, and a better tomorrow.
Yet, after praying for these things, we return to the world and treat it as though it owes us everything and deserves nothing in return. We exploit the land, poison the waters, destroy the forests, and harm one another. We take from the earth without gratitude, from one another without compassion, and from tomorrow without considering what we are leaving behind.
Perhaps the question is not simply why some of our prayers go unanswered. Perhaps we should ask ourselves what kind of world we are creating while we wait for those prayers to be answered.
How can we ask the earth to feed us while poisoning its soil? How can we ask the waters to sustain us while filling them with our waste? How can we pray for peace while spilling the blood of our fellow human beings? And how can we ask for a better future while destroying the very foundations upon which that future must stand?
Perhaps the greatest contradiction of humanity is that we keep asking for blessings from the very world we refuse to protect.
