Earth, Heaven

It wasn’t a fist-shaking, jaw-thrusting rant at heaven. But I doubted the goodness of God.

It wasn’t a low opinion of him either, really. But I was praying, and I was praying words of the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy. Holy, said three times, speaks of the perfection, the perfect goodness, of God. When I reached the third holy, I was uneasy. I lofted a question to God: "Really?"

1. Mud everywhere.

In fairness to me, I see a lot of crap on a daily basis. It’s everywhere. And I even try to avert my eyes so I don’t see crap that I don’t have to see. I skip a lot of movies.

In my work as a lawyer, even among the best people of our (local) society, things aren’t right. There are people who eat delicious hors d’oeuvres in members-only country clubs while tuxedo-ed artists play soothing music on gleaming grand pianos. They have status and wealth that others envy. Their future comfort seems promised by stock portfolios and homes and overflowing bank accounts. They drive past sweating, food-stamp needing plastic-bottle pickers; they don't see them through the shiny windows of the air-conditioned, leather-seated luxury of their brilliantly engineered, valet-polished cars. Some are lawyers who use their tax-payer funded lawsuits to ruin lesser people, for no measurable benefit to society. They stand for the rest. If I were in their place, I would be them.

I look at them, and I look to God, and I say, "really"?

Not, of course, that I’m a jewel.

Maybe I’m like a man who has lived under months of rainfall. There’s mud in the streets, there’s mud on the sidewalks, there’s mud in the parking garages, and, when I go into my house, mud goes in with me. I can’t imagine a world without mud.

2. Cracking through clouds.

I forget what it’s like to jet away from a rainy climate. The ascent at the end of the runway presses you gently into your seat as the rain-soaked airport falls away, and soon you’re lost in clouds. Soon after that, you crack the sky above the clouds, and the brilliant sun shines down on you, and it shines back up from the layer of clouds below you. The brightness gladdens your spirit, and you gaze at mystic fields and fantastic towers of cloud-architecture that goes on forever.

3. Visions.

It’s good to remember people who have had spiritual cloud-cracking experiences.

Like Moses, who asked to see the glory of God. God allowed it, but he allowed Moses to see him only from behind; the glory of his face would have destroyed mortal Moses. Moses saw from a cleft of a rock.

Like righteous, ruined Job, who took his gripe to God. God gave him a vision of God's own glory. Amazed, Job covered his lip and took back his complaint. The fact that he covered his lip was significant. Lepers in Old Testament times, as they walked, had to cover their lip and call out "Unclean! Unclean!"

Like Isaiah the prophet, who was in the temple, and he saw God in heaven. God’s robe reached down and its hem filled the temple. The vision was overwhelming. ""Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!" (Isaiah 6:5 (NRSV).)

Like Paul, who took beatings, whippings, stonings, ship-wreckings, starvation, exposure to harsh weather, imprisonment, ridicule, all for the sake of spreading the Kingdom of Heaven. But one day, he was carried up into the "third heaven". He "heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell." (2 Corinthians 12:4 (NRSV).)

Like the apostle John. He was at the end of his life, starving on the Island of Patmos. There, he had the glorious vision that is the book of Revelation. And part of what John saw was the worship and praise and honor of God that takes place in heaven.

4. On earth as it is in heaven.

It’s rare to break though the clouds as Moses, Job, Isaiah, Paul, John, and others did. At least, it’s rare to do it in that way. But we can praise our God, and then our thoughts and words accord with heaven. In heaven, all of present hardships and privations fade like a dream fades to one who wakes up.

On earth, we need better eyes. And when I say "we", I mean "I". I would like a dream like Jacob had, with angels ascending to heaven and descending to earth, and God next to me. I would like to wake up and say, like Jacob, "Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!" (Genesis 28:16 (NRSV).)

The seraphs that Isaiah saw cried this to each other: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." (NRSV.) It would be good to know the glory of God around us.

5. Prayer (by Reginald Heber):

     Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
     Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
     Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
     God in three persons, blessed Trinity!

     Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore thee,
     casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
     cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee,
     which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.

     Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide thee,
     though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see,
     only thou art holy; there is none beside thee,
     perfect in power, in love and purity.

     Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
     All thy works shall praise thy name, in earth and sky and sea.
     Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
     God in three persons, blessed Trinity.

The Boy Who Didn't Know

Dad was in a tight corner.

His nine-year-old son was riding with him in his Volkswagen square-back, and the car radio was on. A news report provoked this question: "What’s rape?"

He could have responded clinically. He could have talked about how a man forcefully enters a woman, the injuries that such force often causes, and its mental after-effects, including shame and fear. He could have talked about the fact that some women are so scared that they submit meekly; that some women fight back; and that some women who fight back are cruelly injured. He could have pointed out that rape victims are not always women, and that they are not always adults.

But that would have given me too much to think about.

Instead, with a formality that suggested unease, he said that rape takes place when a man "forces his affection on a woman." I didn’t understand the concept of forcing one’s affection on somebody. Affection seemed to be a purely good thing, so I was baffled that it would have to be forced on someone. That issue cast a shadow across my mind, but I was young and perhaps could not express my confusion, or even entirely understand it, so I went back to being quiet. No doubt Dad was relieved.

Way to go, Dad.

1. Dad’s explanation as allegory.

Dad told me as much truth as I could take in or should have known. His story told me that rape involved a man and a woman, and that it was unwanted by the woman. He did not at that time introduce me to the idea of violent sexual piercing, but he made the idea of emotional seizure stand for physical seizure, and he implied its twisted-ness. There was a lot of important stuff in his quick, short answer.

2. Better not to know.

The beauty of his answer was that it said so much but did not tell me things that a child should not know about. His answer did not shake me.

There are things adults should not see or know about, too. I know an ex-deputy sheriff who broke because of what he found when he searched a home because its family had not been heard from and their neighbors were worried.

3. What cannot be described.

And these are things in the natural world that could be described if it were right to do so. The supernatural combines things that should not be described with things that cannot be described.

Literally cannot be described. As an analogy, take The Lord of the Rings. In the books, Frodo Baggins offers the elfen queen Galadriel the ring of power. She shows to him what she would be with its power, under its power. Tolkien does not describe her in that state, except through her own similes:

In place of the Dark Lord, you will set up a Queen, and I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night. Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain...all shall love me and despair!

Director Peter Jackson tried to show what Tolkien described. As a movie-goer, I wish he had contented himself with showing Frodo’s awed reaction to the beautiful and terrible Queen.

4. Genesis as allegory.

Genesis chapters 2 & 3 describe the fall of man. The story is simple, but I can’t chart all of its implications. I take that as an understatement because I wonder if the story of the fall of man in the Garden of Eden is a brilliant allegory for events too complex and perhaps too terrible for a biblical chapter or a human mind.

I suspect that Genesis 2 & 3 tell us, compactly, as much as we should know, and, with much reflection, as much as we can know. One day, our minds may be made perfect to bear the weight of glory. Then, I trust, we’ll be able to see clearly what we now see only in dim reflection, and this will include our history as God and his angels know it.

Those who mock this part of Genesis miss the point, I think. What they are reading is truth in another form, a different kind of truth than what they expect. But it’s still true. My father did not lie to me about rape; but he did not tell me more than he should have.

5. Prayer.

Lord, as you say, if a child asks for a fish, his parent won’t give him a snake. If he asks for an egg, the parent won’t give him a scorpion. But a good parent won’t give him a scorpion if he asks for a scorpion, either. You are like a good parent. Please give us the understanding we need, and, in the time being, the trust to be content with what we need. Amen.

The Good Physician and the Bad Priests

The Pharisees looked down on Jesus because Jesus kept company with gutter scum. There’s a saying today: "You can’t soar with eagles if you hang out with turkeys." "Exactly", the Pharisees would say. And they were the eagles.

Jesus explained himself this way:

"Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners." [Mark 2:17 (NRSV).]

In the Bible, both priests and physicians had a role as to disease. The difference between Jesus and the Pharisees was which of those roles they took.

1. Physicians.

In a way, Jesus’s choice of metaphor is odd. From the beginning to the end of the Bible, no physician cures anyone. Their only success was when they acted as embalmers. In Genesis, Joseph gave the body of his father Israel to Egyptian physicians for embalming. They also embalmed Joseph. Thus, physicians earn their only hits in the first inning.

Physicians don’t heal the army-commander Naaman’s leprosy. Physicians aren’t even mentioned. God heals him through the prophet Elisha. (2 Kings 5.)

King Asa of Judah was a godly king. (There’s some biblical controversy about this – which is not my subject now.) Two years before he died, his feet became diseased. In Second Chronicles, he sought cure from physicians instead of from God, and they failed.

Then there’s Job. Buried under serial catastrophes, Job suffers his friends. His friends are great men, righteous men, men of understanding, even prophets in their way. And they accuse him.

They demand that he blame himself for his own loss of all comfort and happiness. Job refuses. He calls his accusers "worthless physicians." (Job 13:4.) They are giving him the shaming cure, and he won’t drink that medicine.

Job uses physician as a metaphor for a spiritual healer. Like Job and Jesus, the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah used physicians to stand for spiritual healers:

      Is there no balm in Gilead?
         Is there no physician there?
     Why then has the health of my poor people
         not been restored? [Jeremiah 8:22 (NRSV).]

Physicians appear in the New Testament in four ways. In addition to Jesus using them as a metaphor for his ministry, there was the woman who had bled for many years. Over the years, she poured out her purse to physicians, but they failed to stop her bleeding. She became worse. But she touched Jesus’s robe, and she was healed. (Mark 5.)

And there was Luke the physician. His occupation seems incidental.

Finally, Jesus spoke to men and women that he grew up among. He said, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’" (Luke 4:23 (NRSV).) I suspect that he is using doctor in the same way that Job, Jeremiah, and he himself used physician.

2. Priests.

Not only physicians dealt with disease. So did priests. Leviticus 13 & 14 describe the priestly duty to diagnose leprosy. (Leprosy, as used in the Bible, covered a number of skin diseases.)

A leprous person was an outcast. He could wear only torn clothes. When he walked, he had to cover his lip with his hand and call out "Unclean! Unclean!" He had to live outside the camp. (Leviticus 13:45-46.)

Priests declared when a person was cured. That’s why Jesus told the man he cured of leprosy to show himself to a priest. (Matthew 8:4.)

The casting out of lepers was real, and it had real consequences to the outcasts and their loved ones and friends.

3. Physicians, priests, Jesus, and the Pharisees.

Approaching sin like priests approach disease, the Pharisees gripped a thicker biblical strand than Jesus did in comparing himself to a physician. Like Levitical priests diagnosed leprosy, they diagnosed sin. And then they shunned the sinner, as lepers were shunned. They offered no help to the shunned, except their hard-hearted example.

      I do not sit with the worthless,
         nor do I consort with hypocrites;
      I hate the company of evildoers,
         and will not sit with the wicked. [Psalm 26:4-5 (NRSV).]

Psalm 26 was a diamond-tipped proof-text that the Pharisees could judge Jesus with.

Jesus was the highest of high priests, but he saw himself as a physician. He was the healer of sin. He believed that sinners could be made good.

And physicians don’t heal from a distance.

4. The Great Healer.

The priestly Pharisees of gospel telling self-certified their own perfect spiritual health. Maybe we Christians shake our heads at them for that reason. Maybe we put ourselves above them, because we know our own sinfulness. But maybe we know our own sinfulness so glibly that we really don’t know it at all. If so, that would make us just like them.

So we might go to the Great Healer, and we might ask him to show us our need of healing. Personally, I go to my doctor only when I have a worry. Some people go regularly for a check-up. They don’t want a problem to go un-known until healing is hard or not possible. Those people are wiser about their bodies than I am about mine.

I heard of a physician who poured mineral oil into a patient’s ear and instantly dissolved an earwax build-up that had kept the patient from hearing. I heard of a drunk wastrel who cried out to God in drunken desperation, and he instantly became sober, and he never touched alcohol again. Maybe the Great Healer will lay hands on us and cure a problem instantly.

Maybe he’ll tell us to cut out the cigarettes-of-the-spirit, or the suggary-treats of the soul. And maybe we’ll be wise enough to hear him. (Hopefully, he’ll treat the earwax build-up first.) Maybe he’ll give us spiritual exercises to do.

It would be nice if he said that we were stressed out and sent us on vacation.

But we have to wait and see what he says. If we knew all that a doctor knows, we wouldn’t need a doctor. We don’t know, and we do need.

5. Prayer.

Lord, show me my sin. Speak of my condition. Teach me how I should live, and make me wise and brave and hopeful to live as you direct me to. Speak soundness to my bones and flesh, and health to my spirit. If you choose, you can do these things. Amen.

Furnaces, Bones

Evil learns.

When the Nazis started to mass-murder the Jews, they made soldiers or police battalions line the Jews along trenches and fire bullets into the back of the heads of these men, women, and children. The trenches took the corpses.

But there wasn’t enough land for all of the trenches for all of the corpses that the Nazis wanted to make.

And when a soldier fired a bullet into the back of a head, blood and brain and bits of skull blew back on him. That added to the demoralization of the killers.

The Nazis learned to have their servants fire the bullets into the spines in the back of the necks of their victims. This made less blowback.

But this method, too, was superseded. The Nazis made gas chambers. And trenches were superseded by the furnaces that sent the ashes of Jews into the skies over Dachau and Auschwitz and other death capitals.

      My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
        Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
      O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
         and by night, but find no rest. [Psalm 22:1-2 (NRSV).]

1. Nick-of-time stories.
 
Nick-of-time stories are popular – all is lost, but the hero bursts in at the last moment to make things right. Some are in the Bible.

The Egyptian army is bearing down on the Israelites. God parts the Red Sea to save his fleeing people.

God is about to rain firey hell on Sodom, where Lot lives. Angels in the form of men urge him to go. But he tarries. Finally, they literally take him by the hand to lead him out of the city. Then the destruction comes.

The Assyrian army surrounds Jerusalem. The Assyrian general taunts the people listening to him from the city walls. He says their God sent him to crush them. He tells them to come out to him, lest, holed up in their city without supplies, they eat their own dung and drink their own piss. In the night, and angel of God kills 185,000 in the the Assyrian camp. The Assyrians withdraw. At home, the Assyria king is assassinated by his sons.

Jesus is sleeping in a boat and his disciples are with him. A storm sweeps upon them, but Jesus keeps sleeping. When the boat is about to go down, they awaken Jesus. He rebukes the storm, and the sea becomes calm. (Then he rebukes his disciples.)

2. After-the-nick-of-time stories.
But the Bible also has stories where the last moment goes by, and there is no rescue, but things turn out well anyway.

In the book of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are Jewish officials in the court of King Nebuchadnezzer of Babylon. The order goes out that all must worship the king’s golden image when they hear the music of the"horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble" (NRSV). Shadrach, Mesach, and Abednego refuse to worship the image.

So they are condemned to die in a blazing furnace. Men throwing them into the furnace themselves die from the fire. No rescue comes at the last moment.

Rescue comes after these men are thrown into the furnace. Looking into the furnace, people see Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego walking around, and even their clothes are not singed. And there is a fourth man with them.

The children of Israel saw themselves in Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Both pieces of the split kingdoms of Israel and Judah had been conquered; the people had been taken far away from their homeland. But, after this annihilation of their kingdoms, they were restored to their homeland by a benevolent king, and they began again as a united country.

Israel in that time was exactly the vision of the prophet Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones. Skeletons reassembled themselves, sinews connected the bones, flesh and skin and hair grew over the skeletons, and the bodies stood up.

The after-the-last moment theme continues in the New Testament. Martha and Mary and Lazarus are friends of Jesus. Lazarus becomes sick, and Martha and Mary send a message to Jesus and plead with him to come so that Lazarus will not die. Jesus tarries. Lazarus dies. Martha and Mary are devastated.

Grieving Martha acknowledges to Jesus that she trusts that Lazarus will rise in resurrection of the dead on the last day. But Jesus immediately calls Lazarus forth from his tomb and restores him to his sisters.

The Gospels themselves are after-the-last-moment narratives. The resurrected Jesus appears, unrecognized, to two disciples on the road to Emmaus. They tell him about their hope that Jesus would redeem Israel, but he had been crucified. Jesus opens their eyes, and they recognize him, alive and with them.

3. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnaces of Dachau.

I am uncertain that I have any right to write about the Holocaust. But whatever its other effects, the Holocaust led to the restoration of Israel in Palestine. After the Holocaust, the Jewish state became a 20^th Century expression of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace. The skeletal survivors of the death camps made the scattered skeletons in Ezekiel’s vision live again in a resurrected Israel.

The prophet Ezekiel had a wife whom he delighted in. God told him that she would die, and she did. So when he saw the bones in the valley reassemble and rise, I suppose that Ezekiel must have thought about more than his helpless nation.

I think about the millions of victims of the Holocaust. I might be unorthodox, or I might not be. But God is God. On the last day, I would rather be a Jewish victim than a Christian predator. I want to believe that the fourth man who was in the furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego was with the Holocaust victims in their hour of death.

4. Dream.

I slept between beginning and ending this essay. I dreamed that my mom was young, happy, and alive. It was a good dream, until I remembered that I had gone to her funeral. Then I was frightened, because I thought that I had lost my mind.

5. Prayer.

Lord, I am not the first to say: I believe. Please help my unbelief. Amen.

Shit Going On

A helpless man on his back foams from his mouth. Another man’s legs make repetitive hopping motions. He too is on his back. A young boy’s arms spasm as if he’s frantically kneading dough. But his hands reach nothing, and he’s not controlling them. A little boy’s body is still, and it will be so forever.

These are victims of sarin nerve gas attacks, shown in videos from Damascus, Syria .

These adults and children are mourned. But now they are also sad exhibits in the debate about what America should or should not do in Syria. And inevitably they will become exhibits in an argument against God: "If God is all powerful and all loving . . .."

1. The book of Job.

In the biblical book of Job, after one tragedy after another crushes Job, after Job’s righteous friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar try to argue him into accepting reponsibility, after Job complains to God, Job has a vision. It’s a terrifying, amazing, mysterious, and beautiful vision, and afterward Job knows that God is in the right.

To crudely summarize that vision: There’s shit going on that you don’t know.

2. The book of Revelation.

The book of Revelation is similar. It’s written to Christian communities that were suffering and wondering why, if they were in the right and God is all-powerful.

And John writes of stars being swept from heaven and of angels pouring bowls full of plagues that poison first the oceans and then the other waters of the earth. He writes of four living creatures, each with six wings and eyes all around and inside, who sing God’s praises.

And John writes of war in heaven and the great dragon thrown down to earth, where he goes to war against the saints. And John writes of a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, crowned with twelve stars, whom the dragon tries to sweep away by spewing a flood of water from his mouth, but the ground opens and swallows the flood.

Yeah, to summarize again: There’s shit going on that you don’t know.

3. There’s shit going on.

And there’s shit going on in our lives, too.

It’s a different scale than what’s described in Job and Revelation, but it’s still shit. Jobs lost; loved ones who suffer; loved ones who die; painful, lingering illnesses; hunger; injustice; children of caring, careful parents in prison for life. People who wake up in Damascus, dress their children, eat breakfast, and die before noon.

4. More to the story.

The book of Job doesn’t end with Job putting his hand over his mouth and saying that God is in the right. It ends with Job restored to wealth, long life, and children.

The book of Revelation doesn’t end with plagues, dragons, firey destruction, or war and flight. After those come a new heaven, a new earth, and a new Jerusalem – peace and joy for the righteous.

So, to summarize: There’s shit going on you don’t know, but everything will be alright.

So be patient.

5. Patience ain’t easy.

But patience isn’t easy. In the sixth chapter of Revelation, martyrs under God’s alter are impatient to know when they will be avenged. They’re told to rest, because the slaughter of the saints is not finished.

And it isn’t easy for us. It isn’t easy when you lose your job, and you lose hope of finding a new one.

It isn’t easy when you succumb to foolishness and sin, and you bear your shame in front of your family.

It isn’t easy when you body or mind starts to fail, and what you once could do easily you can’t do, and you know that you’ll never do it again.

It isn’t easy when your foes are strong, and they have seemingly infinite resources to oppose you, to win not by right but by might.

6. Let’s not speak piously about faith.

And let’s not blame the victim. Let’s not intone piously about only having faith. If we do, we condescend to great ones who wrote great words. For example:

Psalm 22 starts with this wretched lament:

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
     and by night, but find no rest. [NRSV.]

Some psalms start like a dirge, but they end hopefully. Like Psalm 6. But not Psalm 88.

1 O Lord, God of my salvation,
    when, at night, I cry out in your presence,
2 let my prayer come before you;
    incline your ear to my cry.
　
3 For my soul is full of troubles,
    and my life draws near to Sheol.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the Pit;
   I am like those who have no help,
5 like those forsaken among the dead,
    like the slain that lie in the grave,
    like those whom you remember no more,
    for they are cut off from your hand.
6 You have put me in the depths of the Pit,
    in the regions dark and deep.
7 Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
     and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Selah

　
8 You have caused my companions to shun me;
    you have made me a thing of horror to them.
    I am shut in so that I cannot escape;
9 my eye grows dim through sorrow.
    Every day I call on you, O Lord;
    I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you work wonders for the dead?
     Do the shades rise up to praise you?
          Selah
11 Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
     or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
12 Are your wonders known in the darkness,
     or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness?
　
13 But I, O Lord, cry out to you;
     in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 O Lord, why do you cast me off?
     Why do you hide your face from me?
15 Wretched and close to death from my youth up,
      I suffer your terrors; I am desperate.
16 Your wrath has swept over me;
     your dread assaults destroy me.
17 They surround me like a flood all day long;
     from all sides they close in on me.
18 You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me;
     my companions are in darkness.[NRSV]

7. "I know that my Redeemer lives!"

Horror and hope is a subject that the Bible speaks about with great beauty, so I find myself quoting long passages of it, which is not my habit. But who spoke more eloquently or powerfully than Job? Here he speaks to his righteous friends, who blame him for the misfortunes that have torn him like wild dogs.

2 "How long will you torment me,
    and break me in pieces with words?
3 These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;
    are you not ashamed to wrong me?
4 And even if it is true that I have erred,
    my error remains with me.
5 If indeed you magnify yourselves against me,
    and make my humiliation an argument against me,
6 know then that God has put me in the wrong,
    and closed his net around me.
7 Even when I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I am not answered;
    I call aloud, but there is no justice.
8 He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass,
    and he has set darkness upon my paths.
9 He has stripped my glory from me,
    and taken the crown from my head.
10 He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,
     he has uprooted my hope like a tree.
11 He has kindled his wrath against me,
     and counts me as his adversary.
12 His troops come on together;
     they have thrown up siegeworks against me,
     and encamp around my tent.
 13 "He has put my family far from me,
     and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.
14 My relatives and my close friends have failed me;
15 the guests in my house have forgotten me;
     my serving girls count me as a stranger;
     I have become an alien in their eyes.
16 I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;
     I must myself plead with him.
17 My breath is repulsive to my wife;
     I am loathsome to my own family.
18 Even young children despise me;
     when I rise, they talk against me.
19 All my intimate friends abhor me,
     and those whom I loved have turned against me.
20 My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh,
     and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
21 Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends,
     for the hand of God has touched me!
22 Why do you, like God, pursue me,
     never satisfied with my flesh?
23 "O that my words were written down!
     O that they were inscribed in a book!
24 O that with an iron pen and with lead
     they were engraved on a rock forever!
25 For I know that my Redeemer lives,
     and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
26 and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
     then in my flesh I shall see God,
27 whom I shall see on my side,
     and my eyes shall behold, and not another. [NRSV.]

8. The last word.

The prayer of John at the beginning of the book of Revelation is the last word of history. It is also the last word of this essay.

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, who made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. [Revelation 1:5-6 (NRSV).]

Sleepless

I couldn’t sleep and I tried to get help. Narcotics had side effects that I hated. Marijuana, a blessing for many who are seriously ill, was for me a childish thing that I needed to put away.

So I learned that the Word is true: God gives sleep. (Psalm 127:2.)

1. Watches of the night.

I learned the truth of that when I learned that God also gives wakefulness. I would wake up in the night. I would wake, by my watch, exactly on the hour – 5:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m, and so forth. Coincidences exist, but I considered this coincidence to be too marvelous.

And I felt that God was waking me to worship. But at 3:00 a.m., I had other ideas. Instead of getting up and kneeling next to my bed, usually I would pray in my recumbent position. Soon I would be asleep again.

God was patient. In the meantime, I shared my nighttime wakefulness with a Bible-study group I attend. I shared my wonder about whether God was calling me to rise and pray. (I had convinced myself that this was an open question.) The leader of the group said that she believed that I already knew the answer to that question, and she was right. She suggested that I rise, pray, and go back to sleep. That became my habit, more or less. ("More or less" because I am made of clay; I try to be honest about that.)

This would happen for a while.

2. Peace.

But though God wants us to be awake, he also wants us to rest. I might be right or wrong, but sometimes when I wake at night, I believe that it is only my old enemy insomnia come to visit. I slip its grip without chemical help now.

I tend to pray. Usually, prayer gives me rest. But when it doesn’t, then at least I’ve prayed; I’ve communicated with my Lord, and I haven’t fretted about not sleeping.

3. Night prayers.

 Prayer at night for me is different from prayer in the morning or during the day. My mind is at least a little foggy. So rote prayers are a blessing in those times.

So I might say the Lord’s Prayer. ("Our Father, who art in heaven . . ..") I might say it slowly, focusing on each word as if each word were a bead to be rubbed between the fingers. Or I might say or sing (in my mind) a familiar hymn.

Lately, I’ve tried to memorize prayers that I find in the Bible. The book of Revelation has prayers said in heaven. I’ve memorized two, so that I might repeat them in unoccupied moments during the day, or in the night when I can’t sleep. One is this:

To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. [Revelation 1:5-6 (NRSV).] Another:
Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered
   To receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honor and glory and blessing! [Revelation 5:12 (NRSV)(this is really a hymn).] Everyone is different. I’m reading from the journal of the amazing Frank Laubach. To him, as I understand him, the best prayer is prayer that asks God to direct your prayers, accompanied by a listening ear to hear that direction. I’ve done that, and I find that I pray more imaginatively, more freely, when I do. But I also find my efforts at rote prayers suitable, as exercises in praise, as praise is done in heaven, using words shaped by holy persons or heavenly beings.

4. What’s your experience?

Maybe other people are doing this, and they can add their own helpful experience to what I’ve written. Maybe this will be a blessing to people who find themselves awake at nighttime and tired in daytime.

5. Prayer.
"Sweet is the sleep of laborers . . .." Lord, teach us to us make good use of our time. In those cracks or chasms of time between busy-ness and hurry, and in sleepless times at night, let us be laborers in prayer, serving you with our thoughts and our words when we are not serving you with our actions. Amen.