Put Away the Umbrella

I have kind of an odd prayer request for you today.

Yesterday I got my hair cut. My barber asked if I had read about his brother in the paper. He showed me a newspaper article about a guy who looked a little bit like him. I assumed he was kidding about this guy being his brother. The man in the story had lost 300,000 pounds of live coral to thieves.

It really was his brother. And this is a big deal. As it was explained to me, aquarists pay $8.00 per pound for live coral, and people who sell it keep it offshore in federal waters, on bits of sea bottom that are allotted to them. He had been cultivating this stuff for five years, and now it’s gone, and it’s the end of his business unless it’s recovered.

At first, I thought it was a joke, but it’s not. It’s terrible. So maybe some of you will join me in praying the coral is found and returned, and that these two brothers will credit God with it and turn to him.

Also, I am pleased to report that my campaign of psalm memorization goes well. I’ll give you the list of psalms I’ve managed to master: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 15, 23, 34, 37, 41, 63, 101, and 141. I’m about to wrap up Psalm 9. You probably thought I wouldn’t follow through with this. I admit, I have missed more than a few days, but I’m doing okay.

It’s wonderful to know this stuff. In the Bible, God promises things, and he gives us guidance, and he warns us about problems we may encounter or cause. It’s all as fresh and relevant today as it was in ancient times. Much of this material is expressed in the psalms, so if you memorize them, you come to understand what God will do for you and what you have to do for him. That brings power into your life. The Bible is like the Constitution. If you don’t know what’s in it, you may fail to get the benefits it confers on you. If you do know it, you can have faith in God’s promises, causing them to be fulfilled, and you can avoid provoking him.

Over and over, I am startled by the good things God does for me, and the way my prayers are answered. It’s funny, but he often does exactly what I ask, and I’m so conditioned to expect the neglect and punishment I deserve, it takes me a while to realize a prayer has been granted. Even when God gives you precisely what you ask for, you can fail to see it unless you’re paying attention.

A few weeks back, I started feeling that, at last, I was walking in God’s blessings. My family has always been under a curse, and I’m very accustomed to it, but lately I have felt my back straightening up. I have started to feel that it’s safe to be less defensive and to expect good things. It’s not an easy thing to face. After you’ve spent several decades being blindsided and cheated and sandbagged, it’s hard to stop bracing yourself as though waiting for a storm to pass.

It can bring tears to your eyes when you see God turning toward you and coming through for you, after half a lifetime of losing when it seemed you should win. I guess this is how a person would feel after being healed of paralysis or blindness. It overloads your understanding.

To me, winning doesn’t mean great riches or earthly power. It certainly doesn’t mean fame. I want a family that works. I want to succeed at the things I do. I want health and reasonable prosperity. I want to have hope and confidence. I want a little purity in my life. And contentment. I believe God wants all these things for the vast majority of us, and that we can get them through faith and obedience. If there is a lack in your life that you just can’t get God to fill, it must mean there’s a blessing that will come from it.

I am conscious of things I need to do in my own life, to help the blessings flow. I have to watch out for self-righteousness, which can take the form of scorn or schadenfreude. I have to be as patient and forgiving with others as I want God to be with me. I have to squelch lust. The Internet is a minefield, in that regard. Even well-meaning people I know will sometimes send funny emails featuring naked women. Before the Internet, that kind of thing really was not part of my life. It’s amazing how the web funnels sins like lust and gambling and hate into our lives.

I can’t expect things to continue to improve unless I continue to improve. That’s the bottom line.

I remember my trip to Israel, back in the Eighties. It was such an odd thing; a Gentile whose life was falling apart, being drawn across the Atlantic to spend four months in the Holy Land. From the minute I left Kentucky until I stepped off the return flight in New York, I felt as though God’s hand was guiding me. I was an even worse Christian then than I am now, but it was as if he knew this was important, as groundwork for something later in life.

I did things wrong. I arrived on a Friday. I didn’t tell Aaron I was coming. He was in Jerusalem, and I ended up on his former kibbutz near Afula. Then back to Jerusalem, where I sat in on yeshiva lectures–where I located Aaron by spotting his horrendous plaid boxers hanging on a clothesline. Then four months on the kibbutz next to his. Working in the grapefruit fields. Chicken houses. Date groves. Almonds. Sleeping on Masada; weekends in Jerusalem. Having a vision on the kibbutz. Witnessing strange behavior from people who seemed to have their strings pulled by spirits.

I was alone, but it was like a guided tour. I trusted God to lead me around and take care of me, and he did. And then I got home, and his guidance seemed to be gone. I tried to get it back by joining a church a few years later, but I got offended by prosperity theology and quit. Then I became a realtor. A college student. A grad student in physics. A law student. A lawyer. A writer. After 911 I began praying regularly, and after a few years, I found that God was willing to guide me again. Now I attend church. I participate in charity. Old sores are healing. New doors are opening. I feel like I’ve picked up the thread I dropped when I left Israel.

I wish I could tell other people how to get this, but I know I’m not ready or worthy to do it, and I know almost no one listens. I certainly didn’t. I was terrified that I’d become a fanatic and sabotage whatever progress I had made in the secular world. I guess I’ve done that, but none of that really belonged to me anyway. It was just bait, to keep me off track. “Vanity,” the Bible calls it. “Leasing.” Nothing I could claim as an eternal asset, or which could not be taken away from me by my enemies. The one you serve in order to get things can usually take them away when you stop serving him.

It’s working. That much, I can tell you. I hope what I write here will help some of you maintain or renew your enthusiasm.