Neil Gaiman recounts this small scene in his stunning story titled, “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury.”
A poor man found himself in a forest as night fell, and he had no prayer-book to say his evening prayers.
So he said, “God, who knows all things, I have no prayer-book, and I do not know any prayers by heart. But you know all the prayers. You are God. So this is what I’m going to do: I’m going to say the alphabet, and I will let you put the words together.”
In the “Sunday’s Readings” article in this week’s issue of The Living Church, the authors speak of the glory of God who is beyond all our words:
The consistent theme of [Trinity Sunday]’s readings is the glory of God: a glory so deep and so rich that even the exalted poetry of Psalm 29 only scratches the surface. Wise theologians have said before that we will spend the rest of eternity learning about God and never exhausting the topic, because God is infinite and we are not.
Perhaps, like Gaiman’s narrator, we find ourselves grasping only the “dictionary-shaped hole on the shelf” rather than the words.
Perhaps, at the end, that is enough.
As Trinity Sunday approaches, I urge you to listen to Gaiman’s lovely story and join him in saying:
“Dear God, hear my prayer …
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
…”
Daily Office Anchor Society 