EARLY ATTEMPTS AT PRAYER

When I was in elementary school, I would talk to God while I should have been trying to get to sleep. My conversations were by no means profound, I'm not implying that was a spiritual adept at 10 or anything like that; some kind of mystical prodigy wunderkind. No, quite the opposite.

My conversations mostly involved crying out to a God I wasn't sure was there, asking him if he was. Questions, almost exclusively questions. I don't know when I stopped; I assume it was sometime after puberty hit and other life forms (just as mysterious but more noticeably present) began to cosume all my energy. I never heard God's voice in those days, not once. I always assumed he never answered me, and that was perhaps the reason I gave it up. But the truth is he did answer me, but not until years later. The lesson of God answering prayers in his own time has become more and more intelligible to me as I've gotten older, especially in the last few months. But it makes me wonder now: 1) What made me pray back then? 2) What if I hadn't? 3) Would I have recognized God's voice if I'd heard it? 4) Would I now?

I think the answers are 1) The human nature God made me with, trying to do what came natural to it and find God the creator; along with his providential leading. 2) I'm not sure, perhaps the prayers of others would have led me to Him, but maybe it was those earliest yearning cries that made the difference in my later years. 3) Probably not, and 4) Probably not.