A candle doesn't choose where it shines.

O Christ, my Lord, again and again
I have said with Mary Magdalene,
'They have taken away my Lord
and I know not where they have laid him.'
I have been desolate and alone.
And thou hast found me again, and I know
that what has died is not thou, my Lord,
but only my idea of thee,
the image which I have made to preserve
what I have found, and to be my security.
I shall make another image, O Lord,
better than the last.
That too must go, and all successive images,
until I come to the blessed vision of thyself,
O Christ, my Lord. -George Appleton

In times of doubts and questionings, when our belief is perplexed by new learning, new teaching, new thought, when our faith is strained by creeds, by doctrines, by mysteries beyond our understanding, give us the faithfulness of learners and the courage of believers in thee; give us boldness to examine and faith to trust all truth; patience and insight to master difficulties; stability to hold fast our tradition with enlightened interpretation to admit all fresh truth made known to us, and in times of trouble, to grasp new knowledge readily and to combine it loyally and honestly with the old; alike from stubborn rejection of new revelations, and from hasty assurance that we are wiser than our fathers.
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.
-Bishop George Ridding, 1828-1904

An exercise.

 

This post is nothing more than jogging that first mile after you've taken a few weeks off.

You've enjoyed sleeping in, but in pampering your body, you notice that you're muscles are weakening. Slowly, perhaps against your will, the thirst to breathe deeply replaces snoring, and the comfort of a feathered blanket yearns to be traded for a cramp in the side.

Sacrifice of Thanksgiving

I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the LORD. Psalm 116:17

I suppose I've never seen thanksgiving as a sacrifice because sacrifice, by its denotation, entails that something valuable is willingly given at a cost to its owner, and thanksgiving, by its connotation, is what you find in the fridge on Friday morning -- the leftovers.

But thankfulness is more than the memorized words we utter under our breath after Aunt Thelma's stomach-moving potato paste passes us by; it is an act of understanding that we have been given something that we don't deserve. When we look at our gratitude in the truest glass, we see what we are without the gift we've been given. This glance can be rather scary, which is why, when we take the time to look, when we sacrifice our pride and self-deceit, we recognize that we must decide whether or not we will call on His name for grace.

OF COURSE he would.

 


The bell hadn’t rung for dismissal yet, and while the rest of the high school was finishing the last class before lunch, my senior economic students were outside learning nothing about economics. Instead, they were learning about the power of prayer, the faithfulness of our God and His grace to us. Well, I hope they were learning these things. I certainly was as I stood and watched.

Their faces shone as they surrounded one of their fellow classmates and welcomed him back to school, even if it were just for a visit. German was in the middle of them all, soaking in the attention and greeting each one them. He couldn’t contain his excitement, and the sound of his loud, unsure voice, which would have made so many other teenagers run away, was eagerly absorbed by all.

German, you see, isn’t supposed to be alive. Although he was in classes just a year ago, during his summer vacation he was involved in a serious bike accident that left him in a coma. German, the best soccer player in the school, was no longer playing a game. He (and his loved ones) were struggling for his life.

Throughout the first few months of his injury, the prognosis worsened. He was moved from a good hospital to one of the worst – a hospital in which medications are prescribed but not given and care taking is left to the family, not provided by trained medical professionals.

People all over the world prayed for German, no one more than the people whom knew him best, and with weary delight, they were thrilled as he came out of his coma. Of course, they met the negativity of the educated world, but step by step they watched as they watched impossibilities facilitate.

Certainties in such situations cannot be given.

“We’re not sure if he will be able speak.” (He speaks.)
“We’re not sure if he’ll be able to eat.” (He eats.)
“We’re not sure if he’ll be able to walk.” (He walks.)
“We’re not sure if he’ll be able to remember.” (He recognizes.)

Each not sure was attacked by prayer, and each not sure has been thrown to the side in attempts to meet the next one.

As I watched the seniors talk with German, I couldn’t help but wonder who would get the credit for his recovery. Some of my first deep conversations with the students were about the bleak situation, and they sought God for His strength. Now that the situation wasn’t as desperate, will they still seek Him for His help?

German’s journey in front of him is long; he is by no means back to where he was last year, but God has been gracious. He has taken a situation that seemed hopeless and breathed life upon it. God is faithful to answer our prayers, although sometimes in conventional ways. I wonder, though, how many times we fail to see God’s answers because we fail to give Him the credit for the organization of intricate circumstances.

So often we entreat Him boldly with requests that we do not have an answer to, and at times even dare to think ourselves full of faith when others cease to pray. But I wonder, where is that faith when the request has been answered, when the answers are explained, and the “We knew all alongs” begin to pop into our lives? Todays miracles, it seems, take more faith after they occur than before simply because we have room to reason.

“He would have died, but new technology...”
“I wasn’t going to be able to pay the bill, but I got my tax return statement...”

We are a generation that begs God for signs, but at the very appearance of those signs we attempt to explain them and Him away and are left at a loss when we don’t see Him working. He reaches out to show us His existence, yet we, by defiance or laziness, will not open our hearts to His miracles. We expect Him to do the extraordinary and lose the fact that He can work in the ordinary just as easily (though perhaps more amazingly).

But He is patient. He does the ordinary and proves His practicality knowing full well that He may be taken for granted. He does things that embrace reason, despite our attempts to reason away His interaction in our lives away. He heals the sick. He teaches us to know that He is God, a God that's not bigger than today.

He answers prayers. Whether or not we acknowledge the means by which He answers those prayers, well, that's a whole other prayer in itself. 

Effect and Cause

They stumble forth from binding blindness
Drawn not by light seen but by light felt.