I switched off the light, adjusted my pillow, put the latest tome to rest on the nightstand, and drew the covers up around my head. Wait, what's that light?

"Honey, did you leave a light on?"

"No. That's the moon, a full moon. Want me to draw the curtain?

"No. That's God's business. It's ok with me." I turn and sigh.

I don't why I said it that way: "God's business." I lay there a while imagining all the countless, simultaneous things God must do in every nanosecond, effortlessly. Like holding together the not insubstantial atoms that comprise my cat, a gelatinous fur-sack asleep on my foot. Nudging her I nudge God, God listening to the petitions of millions, present for each individual in a way that I sometimes struggle to be for even the one person in front of me. God never sleeping, always attentive, tracking every movement and every thought. God 24-7, up all night, awake to all that is.

I’m awake too, albeit with none of His omniscience. I can't sleep. I get up, shuffle to the window, and stare out at God's night light, a moon hovering over the water. I thought about earlier in the evening, when thunderheads scudded seaward, jagged cracks of lightning thrown across them. He did that too, while all the time hearing the inarticulable prayer underneath my spoken prayer, reading my thoughts while orchestrating tides and gravity and holding together the dark matter of space.

The cat brushes my bare ankle, takes up position beside me, impassive face seaward. Infinity is in her eyes. Or maybe it’s just a plea for food, a midnight snack.

“‘Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the Lord. ‘Do I not fill heaven and earth?’” (Jer. 23:24). J.I. Packer explains that “he is present everywhere in the fullness of all that he is and all the powers he has, and needy souls praying to him anywhere in the world receive the same fullness of his undivided attention." My tiny little prayer that wafts heavenward, caught by the ocean breeze, lit by moonlight, joins with the weighty petition of a persecuted saint languishing in a North Korean prison or the hungry prayer of a malnourished African. God gives each His full attention without the expenditure of an iota of his great mind or strength.

No one can understand that mystery. And yet we have pictures of it in scripture. A woman suffering from a decade of bleeding manages to touch Jesus in spite of a crowd, and Jesus saw and healed her (Lk. 8:43-48). A lame beggar calls out to Peter and John, and it is recorded that “Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John,” and he was healed (Acts 3:1-10). God has a razor-sharp focus on the prayers of His people, directs His gaze of love unto us.

I look down. The cat has departed, following the rut worn in the carpet between our room and the food bowl. I say one more prayer, letting it fall back into the deep with the undertow, deep unto deep, and return to bed.

“Did you draw the curtain?”

“Oh no, I couldn’t. God is still up.”