What Might I Say to an Athiest

If you want to understand me:

spend time with monks who live under a vow of silence;
watch a fistful of sand blow through your fingers on a craggy cliff;
listen to a single snowflake, and then to a chorus of them;
And finally, permit yourself to set aside
textbooks and treatises,
mirrors and tools.
Fill their place
WIth poetry.
And as you do, consider the possibility:
You ARE the poetry in the hidden places.

Do these, and I might begin to seem less ridiculous.

What Do You Call Forgiveness?

Today I read prayers, composed by the Kalahari Bushmen--written long before missionaries ever found their tribes.

(You are the master)
Lord, Lord, you are the Lord.
You created all things.
You are the master of the forest.
You are the master of the animals.
You are our master, and we are your servants.
You are the master of life and death.
You rule, we obey.

(For protection against snakes)
When the foot in the night stumbles,
Let the obstacle not rear up and bite.
There are many branches strewn across our path
Which threaten no harm to the clumsy foot,
Protect against those sharp-toothed branches
That spring to life and kill.

(On a journey)
Keep us safe from every ill,
Every mishap, every pain.
Let no men or animals attack us.
Lord, bring us safely home.

But my own prayer on reading these was not as confident as the prayers of these Bushmen, whose prayers I've been taught to disdain as the prayers of the unsaved.
Lord, I don't pretend to understand the full mystery of the way you as Son of God instate the conditions of forgiveness, but something feels shallow in my belief if I am to espouse the idea that You would look upon such a prayer and shrug and say, "Sorry.  Too bad no one came along to tell you My story.  I could have done something for you then, but as it stands I can do nothing with your request for a safe trip home, for safety from the snake, and I cannot esteem your obedience..." 
We (those blessed to hear Your story from our cradles) can comfort ourselves by thinking, well such prayers brought missionaries...but what of the ones who prayed these before the missionaries ever arrived?  It seems to me that to believe them collateral damage is to believe You a slave to time and chance, and that simply cannot be! You may allow that man's free will should limit Your power, but to allow time and chance to rule Your eternal availability is something else entirely, is it not?  I would rather believe that I've walked under faulty teaching than to believe that You are so happily treacherous and cavalier with destiny.  I know You are God and can do what You like, but doesn't that maybe mean that You could choose to do good though my eye might see evil?
And so, I wondered if I thus blasphemed myself right out of my own right-standing--ever to have a hip out of joint, at best.

But later, I read something else in a book called Christy.   It's a semi-biographical novel about a young woman who, in 1912, left a cosmopolitan world to enter remote mountain life as a mission-school teacher.  In the story, she is asked to prepare a newborn's corpse for burial as no other mission employee is available.  She discovers that the mother unintentionally killed her child, never realizing her own hand dealt the death.  The baby, according to the mother, was "liver-growed" which meant that while one infant hand could cross the body and touch the foot from one side, it could not from the other side. Even to the "modern mind" of 1912, this pointed to profound internal organ issues; but to the mountain woman it was something else entirely.

"What do you do then?" I asked.
"You got to force the hand and heel to tech.  When I pulled, the baby hollered and went as limp and white as a new-washed rag doll. Never could do nothin' with her after that.  Give her tea all night long, but nothin' holped.  Jest afore the sunball come up, we heerd the death tick in the wall.  Jest quit breathin' then, she did."
The woman had started crying quietly, wiping her eyes with the edge of her apron.  She led us inside the house and pointed to the little waxen body lying in the middle of a large bed, a white cloth over the tiny face.
The horror of this sickened me.  The baby must have had cruel internal injuries.  Yet Opal McHone had wanted this baby daughter.  She was not a callous, indifferent mother but had acted out of love, love mired by her ignorance and by the superstition handed down to her.
At that time, for the first time in my life, I knew grief.  I had had childish disappointments, yes.  Hurt pride, often.  A sense of loss, sometimes.  But compared to what I was feeling now, these had been superficial emotions because they were so self-centered.  On my tongue now was the first bitter taste of a grief not my own.  My heart was mirroring back from the world's pain just one episode from all the endless woes and infamies caused by the not-knowing and the not-caring.  Opal McHone had not known what she did.  And I had to understand and to forgive her on that basis, otherwise I could be no comfort to her at all.

I read the prayerbook intending to pray and found I couldn't; I read the novel just for fun and found myself praying for You linked them in my mind. 
Don't be afraid to ask questions if they are soul questions and not just some argument springing from an idle mind or a secret lack of courage.  Now, here is better question to ask yourself:  is it likely that a 19-year-old girl completely out of her element in the throes of her first exposure to profound and permanent loss, loss due to ignorance--that even this young girl should have more compassionate wisdom at her disposal than I am able to generate?
"...Opal McHone had not known what she did.  And I had to understand and forgive her on that basis, otherwise I could be no comfort to her at all..." 
If it is all about happening by chance to know the the right things at the right time or else suffer eternal torment, then where in the world does charity find a resting place?  It is a thing to think about...

 SO here is my prayer, from Romans 2, help me to understand the mystery:

For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts  accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? For, as it is written, "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you."
Your law, O God, is that I love You with all my heart and my soul and my mind, and love my neighbor as myself.  Whatever You would have me know of the mysteries of our salvation, may I never be the cause for Your name to be blasphemed. Amen.