Attention-getters

David Esau

Good morning!

At 4:31 a.m. on Monday, January 17, 1994, the relative calm of a holiday morning in downtown Los Angeles was shattered by a sudden twitch in the earth's crust. The people of L.A. were literally shaken out of their beds by an earthquake that measured 6.6 on the Richter scale. One person who experienced the quake said, "It's a very unreal feeling to have the earth moving under your feet. Everything's solid in life until the earth moves. It's a terrifying feeling." Another survivor stated, "It just makes you feel like your life could end at any minute." And for some it did. Even structures that had been deemed "earthquake proof" came crashing down in a matter of seconds. In response to the damage to the L.A. freeways, a spokesman for the California Department of Transportation concluded, "Nothing human beings have ever built is earthquake proof."

Getting our Attention

For most of us, it takes a crisis situation to bring about real change in our lives. It takes the unexpected, things that catch us off guard, to call into question where we have placed our priorities and values. The Bible tells us that crisis events are God's ways of getting our attention back on Him, because as long as everything seems solid in our lives, our tendency will be to hurry along with our noses buried in our agenda, thinking that we are the centre of the universe. An 18th-century writer by the name of Theophan the Recluse said that "The self-centred person is like a thin shaving of wood, curling up around the void of his or her inner nothingness, cut off alike from the cosmos and the Creator of all things."

Seen in this light, it is easy to realize why the Bible considers God's cosmic attention-getters as acts of mercy. For many of us, they are a strong reason to take a careful inventory of our lives, to evaluate where we stand before God and others. The mercy comes from the fact that those of us who survive or escape personal loss have been given a window of opportunity to reconsider our lives and make radical changes where necessary.

For some, the attention-getter need not be as big as an earthquake. Sometimes it takes only a conversation with a friend, an image from the news or a line from the Bible for God to break through. At other times, it would seem that even an earthquake is not big enough. In Pasadena, California, about 30 kilometres from the centre of the earthquake, hotel patrons were ordering room service an hour after the earthquake--and getting angry at delays!

So we need to ask ourselves: What does it take for God to get my attention, to bring me to the point of change and transformation?

Crisis Prayers

Ideally, we should all be in regular contact with God, open to talking and listening to Him in prayer. But the reality is that few of us are. Most of us, if we are willing to admit it, are crisis prayers. The Bible tells an interesting story about people like us in Luke 8:22-25. One day when Jesus was with His first followers, they decided to get into a boat and cross over to the other side of a lake. As they sailed, Jesus fell asleep. All of a sudden, a whirlwind or hurricane blew up. Jesus' followers found themselves in danger of being swamped, so they went and woke Jesus up, saying, "Master, Master, we're going to drown!"

Like these first followers, we have a tendency to rush to God only when we are in trouble. The immediate crisis and the subsequent aftershocks keep us on our knees, but when the last of the tremors have subsided, we often wander back into the old prayerless patterns.

Prayer: Making the Investment

Of all the areas of our life, prayer is the one where we can least afford to be complacent. We may take daily coffee breaks and have regular times jogging, exercising and dieting for the sake of our bodies, but we refuse to make time for prayer for the sake of our souls. We dedicate enormous effort towards developing our professional skills, yet spend little time getting to know God.

I believe that if we are willing, we can all carve out times in our schedules for silence and prayer. But many of us find silence threatening, especially if we aren't used to it. We don't know what to do with it. We have become alienated from silence. If we get into one of our vehicles to go for a drive, or if we go to the beach or for a morning walk, our most important companion is usually the radio, portable stereo or walkman. It would seem that we can't stand the sound of silence. There was a time when silence was normal and a lot of racket disturbed us. Today, noise is normal, and silence, strange as it may seem, has become a real disturbance.

It may take a real effort for some of us to enter into silence, what one writer has called a "palace in time". And when we do, we may be disturbed to find that even more difficult than getting rid of the surrounding noise is the achievement of inner silence, a silence of the heart. As soon as I enter a place of silence where there is no one to talk to, and no one to listen to, an interior discussion starts up that almost seems to get out of hand. The void of silence is suddenly filled by the many unsolved problems demanding my attention: One care forces itself upon another, and one complaint rivals the next, all pleading for a hearing.

It makes you wonder if the diversion we look for in the many things outside us might not be an attempt to avoid a confrontation with what is taking place on the inside. I find that the inner urges and gentle promptings of God's Spirit (highlighting areas I need to deal with, such as anger, anxiety, bitterness, etc.) often go unheeded because I constantly let myself be distracted by a world demanding all of my attention. When that happens and a crisis situation comes my way, I am shaken to the core.

Know Your Need

Our trouble is that we are usually quite unaware of our constant need for God's grace and help. If only we could truly see how needy we are before God, then we would find prayer the most natural thing in the world. One 17th-century writer put it this way: "It is [people's] ignorance of themselves that makes prayer little in request: Hunger best teaches men to beg. You would be oftener on your knees if you were oftener in your hearts. Prayer would not seem so needless if you knew your needs. Know yourselves, and be prayerless if you can."

But to change our deep-seated assumptions and the lenses through which we have always looked at life is hard, tedious work. To face our inner selves (pride, fears, anger, emotional pain) can be frightening, and so we would rather surround ourselves with busyness and noise to keep our minds from having to deal with the questions raised by our hearts. That is why a 4th-century group of Christians retreated to the desert, calling solitude the "furnace of transformation". Noise and busyness act to repress our inner fears and personal anxieties, as we scramble to achieve an enviable image to display to others. We become "outward" people, obsessed with how we appear, what others will think of us if we do this or that, rather than "inward" people, reflecting on the purpose and meaning of our lives.

It is not my intention to make people feel guilty. Most already have a high amount of that. My hope is that I will inspire you to pray and to find a deeper intimacy with God. I conclude with the wise words of Mother Teresa of Calcutta: "We need to find God, and He cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence."

David Esau lives in Delta, B.C., where he is a pastor.

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