{"id":1908,"date":"2022-08-23T09:11:13","date_gmt":"2022-08-23T13:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1908"},"modified":"2022-08-23T09:11:13","modified_gmt":"2022-08-23T13:11:13","slug":"in-every-circumstance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/23\/in-every-circumstance\/","title":{"rendered":"In Every Circumstance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Throughout the month of August,\u00a0we\u2019re taking a close look at 23 verses of the New Testament.\u00a0 They comprise Ephesians chapter one, which paints one of the Bible\u2019s most comprehensive pictures of what it means for ordinary people to be \u201cin Christ.\u201d \u00a0<\/em>
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I grew up in a church populated by stained-glass saints.\u00a0
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Our sanctuary windows featured dozens of them — monumental, brightly colored portraits of men and women whose lives appeared to be serenely right with God.\u00a0 Their faces were placid and trusting.\u00a0 Their heads were enveloped by golden auras or haloes.\u00a0 All of them were heroes of the faith.\u00a0
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I don’t ever remember thinking that I could be one of them.\u00a0 I don’t remember a moment in which I even wanted<\/em> to be like them.\u00a0 How could an ordinary person be a stained-glass saint?
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Such thoughts seemed to swirl around my efforts at prayer.\u00a0 I wondered how God could put up with my meandering attempts at trying to generate a conversation with him.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know what to do with my body.\u00a0 Was I supposed to look somewhere?\u00a0 Should I close my eyes?\u00a0 Was I supposed to stand or sit or kneel or walk?\u00a0 Did I need to learn an entirely new vocabulary?
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Three pastors once got together in a church study to discuss prayer techniques.\u00a0 In an adjoining room there happened to be a telephone repairman who was working on the lines.\u00a0 The first pastor said, “When I pray, I find it helps to hold my hands together like this, as a personal expression of worship.”\u00a0 The second suggested that real prayer ought to be conducted on one’s knees.\u00a0 The third pastor jumped in, “I think the most authentic posture for talking to God is to lie stretched out on one’s face.”
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At that moment the telephone repairman, who’d been eavesdropping, poked his head around the corner and said, “I’d have to say the most heartfelt prayer I ever prayed was when I was dangling upside-down by my heels from a utility pole about forty feet above the ground.”\u00a0
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What I didn’t know all those years when I was staring at the stained-glass saints is that most of them talked to God more like the telephone guy than those pastors.\u00a0 It had never occurred to me that in the Bible the Big Names regularly found themselves in the midst of Big Crises.\u00a0
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That brings us to Paul\u2019s signature expression of devotion to the Ephesians in verse 16:\u00a0\u201cI have not stopped giving thanks for you,\u00a0remembering you in my prayers.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>
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This is reminiscent of some other statements he makes in his other letters.\u00a0 \u201cRejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances\u201d (I Thessalonians 5:16-18).\u00a0 \u201cRejoice in the Lord always.\u00a0 I will say it again: Rejoice!\u201d (Philippians 4:4)
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Paul is modeling prayer and thanksgiving as a sustained, moment-by-moment way of life.\u00a0
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He appears to anticipate our sighs of skepticism.\u00a0 \u201c\u2019Rejoice in the Lord always<\/em>?\u2019\u00a0 Well, you\u2019re not in my situation.\u00a0 You have no clue how hard my life is.\u201d\u00a0 Which is perhaps why he goes on, \u201cJust so there\u2019s no misunderstanding, let me say it again:\u00a0 Rejoice!\u201d\u00a0 Paul, after all, was intimately acquainted with difficult situations.\u00a0 Scholars believe he penned his letters to the Ephesians and Philippians from the inside of jail cells, and wrote to the Thessalonians while on the run from enemies.
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The most challenging aspect, of course, is summed up in the words \u201calways\u201d and \u201chave not stopped giving thanks.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0
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Sometimes I approach stretches of frantic busyness with a grim attitude of survival. \u201cMy only concern right now, my only goal, is to get through these next few days.\u00a0 Then things will get better.\u201d\u00a0 Prayer gets pushed to the edges of my consciousness.\u00a0 \u201cI just need to slog my way through this list of things to do, and then I can breathe again.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0
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But there\u2019s always another frantic stretch waiting on the other side.\u00a0 What I have learned is how seldom I stop to rejoice in the midst of<\/em> busyness.\u00a0 I may picture myself rejoicing at the \u201cfinish line.\u201d\u00a0 But by doing that I have cut myself off from this moment \u2013 this irretrievable, irreplaceable moment \u2013 in which I can connect with the Lord who is always with me.\u00a0
\u00a0
Paul says, \u201cBe alive now.\u00a0 Stop picturing life as grim stretches that have to be endured.\u201d\u00a0 Do we really want to live the rest of our lives wishing that this moment was some other moment than this moment?\u00a0 God is exclusively available to us in the present tense.\u00a0 What makes this moment<\/em> count forever is that what we experience now<\/em> has the power to transform all our future moments as well.
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When all is said and done, there are two essential alternatives regarding every situation we face.\u00a0 We can either worry or we can pray.
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Prayer is a conversation \u2013 even if only a fleeting one \u2013 that I have with God.\u00a0 Worry is a conversation I have with myself: \u201cWhat am I going to do?\u201d\u00a0 Either we<\/em> are in charge \u2013 which means we have a whole lot of worrying to do \u2013 or God<\/em> is in charge, which immediately transforms prayer from an every-now-and-then religious activity into an ongoing series of touchpoints with the One who secures my life.
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I once heard a man describe his experience as a first-time skydiver.\u00a0 He had received parachute training, donned a jump suit, flown aloft, and witnessed other jumpers land safely on the ground.\u00a0
\u00a0
Poised at the open door of the aircraft, he patted his parachute and asked his flight instructor one final question: \u201cIs this thing really going to work?\u201d\u00a0
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His instructor smiled and said, \u201cThere\u2019s only one way to find out.\u201d
\u00a0
Can God be trusted\u2026in everything?\u00a0 <\/em>Can we really sustain a conversation with him\u2026no matter what the circumstances<\/em>?\u00a0
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There\u2019s only one way to find out.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throughout the month of August,\u00a0we\u2019re taking a close look at 23 verses of the New Testament.\u00a0 They comprise Ephesians chapter one, which paints one of the Bible\u2019s most comprehensive pictures of what it means for ordinary people to be \u201cin Christ.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0I grew up in a church populated by stained-glass saints.\u00a0\u00a0Our sanctuary windows featured dozens of them — monumental, brightly… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1909,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[480,179],"class_list":["post-1908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ephesians","tag-prayer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1910,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908\/revisions\/1910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}