10/26/14
I was in
Omaha for a couple of Saturday soccer games for my son’s U16 boys team. It’s a long way to go from Dubuque,
especially to watch them lose two games by a combined 8-1!! In between games, we went out
for lunch at HyVee, our regional grocery store chain which has a predictable and
dependable cafeteria. Surprises aren’t
the best in between soccer games. I
decided to have the Chinese Buffet, because I was not going to be playing
soccer later. Of course, I received the
fortune cookie that in all likelihood has nothing whatsoever to do with China,
but is expected by those of us who eat Chinese food at a grocery store.
I opened
mine up and this was the fortune:
You will be successful in whatever you do.
This is good
fortune! My first thought was to go join
my son’s soccer team for the second game.
After all, I would love to play at the U16 level and after the 5-1
drubbing they just took, they could use my guaranteed success!! Unfortunately, there is an age limit on this
team and they don’t take 3.5X that age.
I began to doubt that my fortune was all that true.
Resigned to
not playing soccer, I went into the store to pick up some nibbles for the trip
home. A few sunflower seeds are good for
keeping ones wits about them and eyes open on a five hour trip. I had to pick up a couple of other things and
when I went through the check-out line, my total was:
$6.66
I looked at
the cashier and she looked at me. What a
bad fortune!! I thought that perhaps I
should buy something else to avoid the obvious concern raised by the three
successive sixes. But I was able to pay
with 7 one dollar bills. Seven is a
nice, biblical number, so I figured I was safe.
These two
experiences, back to back as they were, got me thinking about how desperate we
as humans are for signs we can depend on.
We have lucky rocks, lucky
charms, lucky socks, lucky numbers, lucky you-name-its. We read the horoscopes and laugh at their
silliness and wonder about their message.
We try Oiuja boards and tarot cards and palm readers and fortune
tellers. We string together circumstances
into coincidences that obviously are directing us (e.g., I saw five blue
Priuses and I have been thinking of getting a Prius. It must be a sign!). We want so much to KNOW what is coming; what
lies in our path; what the future holds.
Followers of
Jesus will immediately see that these various versions of “witchcraft” are of
little value in God’s reality and even lead people toward following false
gods. But it seems to me that far too
often, Christians create their own signs out of the same desire to feel secure
about themselves and their futures. On
the same morning that these odd incidents happened, I was watching the little
television that they mount to the treadmill at the hotel and I saw a preacher
right there on TV promise me “a real estate miracle” if I would plant a seed of
$1000 in his ministry (I wish I was making this up). “I don’t know where, but God is going to give
you a real estate miracle.”
This “fortune”
is, of course, the most crass example of the kind of thing that I am writing about
here. But I hear Christians doing this
in a variety of subtle ways. I hear people
claim well-known and obscure bible verses alike in reference to a specific
situation in their lives. The message is that God promised such and such
and therefore my situation is going to turn out thus and thus. We pray “in Jesus’ name.” We light candles. We negotiate with God.
Sometimes it
works and situations resolve as we want them to. Sometimes I am “successful in whatever I do.” When circumstances turn out the way we
desire it can reinforce our faith and there certainly are times that God does
come through for us just the way we want him to. I heard a person recently who had survived
the ebola infection say, “I want to say that I serve a God who answers prayer.” This is a great testimony. Except as the ebola death toll passes 4000
with little likelihood of the death toll ending soon, Christian relatives of
those who have not survived are left wondering if God only answers some people’s
prayers. Did I not pray hard
enough? Do my prayers not work? Does God only answer some prayers? Maybe nobody was praying for those 4000 who
have not survived.
I find the
traditional answer to this obvious dilemma a bit unsatisfying. It goes like this: God answers all
prayers. Sometimes he says, ‘Yes’,
sometimes he says ‘No’ and sometimes he says ‘Wait’ or ‘Not now.’ I get this but it also leaves me wondering. If God is constant and never changes, shouldn’t
answers to prayer be more predictable?
If not, prayer becomes a bit of a silly exercise since there is no real
way to know what God is going to say.
But if answers to prayer are predictable, then clearly we are missing
it. Many, many people, passionate
followers of Jesus and hospital foxhole Christians are very frustrated with the
way we as humans have assessed the effectiveness of prayer. We want answers we can predict and even
control. But people still die.
I would like
to suggest that there is a dependable answer to every prayer and that it is the
only answer we can depend on; more than that, it is the only answer we
need. I believe that the only and same
answer that is given to every prayer is this:
“I AM”
The first and
only guaranteed answer is God promising that He was, and is and is to
come. It is the promise that God will
be present. It is the assurance that
however the current situation turns out in time, God’s eternal purpose is
fulfilled in Jesus. With the presence of
Jesus, we can do everything (according to Philippians 3:14) including persevere
through whatever difficulties we are facing and regardless of how they turn
out.
This really
is the best answer of all. We will never
be able to discern the outcomes of various challenges we will encounter in
life. There are no signs or fortune
cookies and favorite Bible verses that will assure us that the cancer will go
away and health will be restored. But if
our prayers lead us to a deeper sense of God’s presence; to a more intimate
relationship with the I AM who hears all our prayers and holds our ultimate,
glorious future in His hands, then we will have achieved a greater fortune than
all the fortune cookies or real estate miracles the world will ever offer!
