Don’t Do. Just Ask.
It’s funny. I’m not Jewish (though I thought about converting once), but this time of year always makes me a little more cognizant of spiritual matters. Maybe it’s the fact that, for the last seven years, I have worked closely with Jewish people, and maybe their contemplative behaviour during the High Holy Days just rubs off a little bit. Maybe it’s just that life gets a little more crazy at this time of year, so I begin to yearn for simpler times and simpler pleasures. And leisure to be contemplative.
I read the biographies of famous Christians, and I yearn for what they had. Not the martyr bits like Corrie ten Boom or Darlene Daibler Rose in the concentration camps, or the tuberculosis of Catherine Marshall—I know my limits and I am pretty sure God does, too—but the peace, the discipline, the leisure … and the apparently direct line straight from their hearts to God’s.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I read my Bible and I pray. The reading part, maybe not as much as I should. (Discipline being one of my weak points.) But the praying? All day every day. Pretty much. And not just “God help me with this; God do that for so and so” but “oh wow, God, what a gorgeous sunset” and “God you are so amazing and wonderful” … and even sometimes, “Oh, God, no, really, please, do I have to do that? I don’t want to!” Praying for me is sort of an ongoing, non-stop conversation with God. (And yes, I do stop and listen every once in a while. But God knows I’m a chatterbox, because He made me that way. So I figure He knows I’m gonna talk His ears off. I’m pretty sure He never misses what’s important.)
But despite the ongoing conversation, I don’t always feel like I’m connected. You know that moment when you’re talking to a friend who’s on their cell phone and the line goes too quiet, and you aren’t sure if they are still there or if you lost signal? Yeah. I get that a lot. “Hey, God? Can you hear me now? God? You still there? Did I lose You? God?” It’s disconcerting enough to realize you’ve been talking to a disconnected friend for several minutes … when you think you’ve been talking to a disconnected God, it’s downright terrifying.
I might worry more about feeling that way if I didn’t know that other, better people than me have struggled with this feeling. David cries out to God over and over in the Psalms: “God, where are You? Why have You forsaken me? Why don’t You do something?!” And the whole book of Job reverberates with the pain and fear of a man who feels he’s lost touch with God and can’t for the life of him figure out why. And there’s plenty of extra-Biblical Christian literature that addresses the feeling that you’ve somehow lost the line to God.
What I do know is that God is there, even when I don’t feel His presence. And He’s still listening, even when I feel like my prayers are bouncing off the ceiling.
And what I struggle with, especially at this time of the year, is the feeling that I ought to do something to encourage God to talk to me. That maybe I’ve done something (or not done something) that has upset Him and now I’m getting the silent treatment. As if God were a schoolchild who puts us in coventry when we irritate Him. As if I could somehow do something that would make God want to talk to me again. Me. Make God do something. What a totally ludicrous idea!
Grace is so hard to comprehend. Especially in a world where everything is conditional. If you are nice to your boss and work hard, he will like you and give you a raise. If you are nice to your teachers and do extra credit work, they will give you better grades and nice recommendations. If you are nice to other people, they will talk to you and be your friend and help you.
But grace isn’t earned. It’s a gift. Grace is a random stranger sitting in front of a supermarket with a sign that says, “I’m giving away $1000 to anyone who is willing to ask me for it.” And you have a choice: ask the guy “May I have $1000?” or shake your head at the poor lunatic and walk away.
You don’t earn it by asking. There’s no merit in asking. I ask for all sorts of things, and it doesn’t make me a more worthy person. Any more than turning a key in a lock makes me more worthy of getting into a room. Asking is like the key that opens the lock to release the money. Or God’s grace.
Because God said, “Ask and you will receive.”
Not “ask and give a tithe” or “ask and read your Bible every day” or “ask and never cuss.”
Just … Ask.
Why is it so hard to just ask? Is it pride? An attitude that I don’t want a free handout, but want to earn what I have? That I don’t want to be a moocher or a panhandler? Is it that after years of asking other people for all kinds of things and being let down, that somehow I figure God is going to say “no” or, worse, say “sure” and then not follow through? Is it years of working for a living and earning every raise and every bonus through grueling labour, I can’t see any other way of getting what I need? Is it some sort of masochistic need for justice, where I feel like I don’t deserve it and so shouldn’t ask for it? Like a kid who wants to borrow the car, but figures there’s no point in asking since he dented the fender last time he took it out. I mean, I’ve broken God’s rules — some of them pretty spectacularly — so why should God even talk to me, much less give me anything?
I don’t know. But I do know that God said “Ask.” Just ask.
And the question becomes: Do I believe Him enough to dare?