(The following is a sermon to myself. Though I’m sure it doesn’t apply to you, you are welcome to listen in if you like.)
. . . Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Luke 11:9-10. NIV.
The sign-off of a segment on the now-canceled Prairie Home Companion, a long-running radio program starring Garrison Keillor, “Guy Noir, Private Eye,” in a Phillip Marlow voice, intones, “A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but, one man is still trying to find the answers to life’s persistent questions…..Guy Noir, Private Eye.”
One supposes that there are many of “life’s persistent questions.” “Who shot JFK?” “Did man really land on the moon?” “Who is “Q-Anon?” While these are answers “inquiring minds” would surely like to know, it goes without saying that they pale in comparison with my favorite question, “How does one stay tethered to God?” And the follow-up, “Knowing the answer, why don’t I do it?”
Perhaps, this author has watched ‘way too many science-fiction movies, but may I submit that the astronaut’s tether compares favorably with our tether to God – prayer. Marie Barnett’s iconic 2001 praise song, “Breathe,” recorded by Michael W. Smith,” asserts that God is “. . . the air I breathe. Your holy presence living in me. . ..” Prayer provides two-way (yes, two-way) communication with God. Further, prayer stabilizes us by giving us something to hold onto in a world that appears spinning out of control in a seemingly unconstrained “death-spiral.”
“Tethered,” a nautical term borrowed by NASA, conjures up images of countless, dauntless astronauts tied to a spaceship by an umbilical cord performing “space-walks.” The “tether” is truly a “life-line.” It provides O2 for the astronaut to breathe, two-way coms contact for them to communicate with the ship, and stability – a mechanism to keep them from floating off into space, joining myriads of other dead items of “space-debris.”
Just as the astronaut will die physically absent connection to the tether, the Christian will die spiritually absent connection to the Source, God, through prayer. The obviousness of this truth, notwithstanding, it begs the question, “Knowing this spiritual fact, why don’t I (we) do it?”
The question slaps me up aside the head. It’s personal. (This is ipse est sermo ego annuncioa, a sermon that I’m preaching to myself, remember.)
What is my excuse? Busyness? Other “stuff” I gotta do? More important things? Fatigue? Guilt? Laziness? Distraction? Boredom? Disappointment? Inadequacy? Pride? Addiction? “The Pandemic?” Unbelief… O wait! Stop the bus – “unbelief.” Let’s examine that one more closely. Could all of these other excuses indeed be covers for, or manifestations of, unbelief?
For many years, I’ve thought that man’s first and greatest sin was pride. Recently, though, an article or book, the name of which I cannot remember, pointed out that “pride” was Satan’s first sin. It is true that the Prophet Isaiah, in a passage that has been interpreted as comparing Satan to the King of Babylon, prophesies:
You said in your heart, “I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” Isaiah 14:13,14. NIV.
But, assuming, arguendo, that Isaiah is, indeed, speaking of Satan, he is speaking of Satan – not Adam. In Genesis 3:1b, the serpent asks of Eve, “Did God literally say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?” During the conversation, Eve entertains a doubt that God spoke as He did. That, my friends, is unbelief, and it is the beginning of my – maybe your – unbelief.
“So, Geraldine[1],” you may ask, “did the Devil make me do it?” The solution to that question is too easy an answer, and it quickly shifts the blame to something else. The hard truth is that if I don’t spend time in prayer, I am sinning in unbelief. Do I not believe that God is there? Do I not believe that He is Who He is? Do I not believe that He will do what He says He will do?
An astronaut on a space-walk must stay tethered to the mother ship if he has any hope of survival. No excuses will do. It’s simple, “Stay tethered or you will die.” May I submit that the same holds true for me – for us – in our spiritual lives? “Stay tethered to God our you will die (or at least dose off to sleep.”) God is the “mother ship” and prayer is the tether.
The last statement raises another one of those “persistent questions, “How do I (we) put unbelief behind us?” The question seems to require circular logic, but that may be one of those antinomies that we can never resolve. God, Himself is a bundle of such antinomies. Deal with it.
There are many “persistent questions” in life. The most important ones involve God as well as do the answers. The best news is that I – we don’t have to resolve the antinomies; we don’t have to search for the answers to “life’s persist questions.” We don’t have to decipher the code. We just have to believe God. The rest, including a longing for prayer, will resolve itself. Any questions? I didn’t think so.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
[1] The late comedian, Flip Wilson hilariously performed the character of “Geraldine Jones” throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s. The punch-line of the joke was always, “The Devil made me do it!”
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