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Throwing out the formulas
It was 1968. That much I remember clearly. I don't know if I had yet celebrated my 13th birthday or not, but the important details of the day are firmly etched in my memory.
A new girl came to school. She seemed to be a very sweet spirited girl, though I didn't know her well, and today I cannot recall her name. Not too far into the new school year, my first year in junior high, she asked if I would like to go with her and her family to a church meeting.
It was actually more of a revival type meeting at the Coliseum in Denver. I got permission from Mom and Dad, and went along for the ride.
I met Jesus that night. And upon returning home was immediately advised to put him in a box. Oh, Mom didn't use those words, and she was as gentle as could be with her warning to "not get too carried away with this." But what she really wanted was for me to, as quickly as possible, lose the passion born that night.
It didn't take long for it to happen. We weren't a church-going family and there was just the one Bible in the house, Mom's family Bible, and it was meant to hold mementos, not to be read or studied. (I have it now, in my home. It still holds all of Mom's memories and a place of honor in our little home office, the pages unmarred.) I tried to seek out the girl who had taken me along with her family, but she had already moved, a quick, memorable entrance into my life and just as quick an exit. I was on my own.
Or so I thought.
God wouldn't stay in the box.
Or on a shelf.
I have discovered in the 40 years since this event that I cannot separate any part of myself from him and live.
This is both a comforting truth and a terrifying truth.
Terrifying because I know that in those intervening years, and even yet today, I have taken him into some grievous places. Choices that I made in ignorance, believing God to be more like the fire alarm on the walls of my schools than the all-knowing Creator of all things. Choices that I made that I knew full well were wrong, but made anyway because it pleased me to do so and I thought perhaps he might look away, just for a moment, and miss it. Choices that I made because I failed to trust him with daily bread, with justice, with life.
Lightning hasn't shot down from the heavens striking me dead on the spot because of these choices, but it's not because he is unaware or has chosen not to care. It is because he always allows the choice. So, if I indulge in a little backyard fence gossip or duck out on a friend in need, he is still there, his spirit grieved again by my selfish choices, my all-to-carnal flesh winning another round. (Ephesians 4:30)
Oh, but on those all too rare occasions when I allow him to work through me and by his grace share a word of encouragement, a touch of comfort, a crust of bread or a tall cool drink on a hot summer day, he is there. Then I know, in those all too infrequent moments, what Jesus meant when he said "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." (John 4:32)
Over the years I have tried any number of formulas for drawing near to God. Formulas for study. Formulas for rote prayer. Formulas for worship. An hour a day, or even two -- Sunday morning worship and back on Sunday night, not enough. Add in Wednesday night studies and Thursday prayers, still not enough. Sing in the choir, teach Sunday school, serve on this committee and that one, too. Still not enough. Never enough. It was never meant to be enough. If I were to give all of my life to the service of the church, it would still not be enough. The formulas, I have discovered, are just another box, just another dusty shelf.
Unless and until I give all of my life to him, unless and until I know his presence in the morning when I rise, in the dark of night when sleep eludes me, and in every moment in between, it is never going to be enough. I have discovered that there is naught but God, his Son and his Spirit, all revealed in his Holy Word. There is no secret formula, no magical incantation, no checklist of tasks to be done.
"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End." Revelation 22:13 (NIV)
Things you won't see in heaven: Formulas, scientific or otherwise
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