Meaningless

Today is A National Day of Prayer. We certainly need it, although quite honestly, it seems meaningless. I wonder if God even listens anymore. I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t. Today is the same as those other few days a year, Christmas or Easter, when we give a moment of our attention to seek God. But just long enough to ensure that it will not impede with the rest of our busy life. We pray for health, wealth and prosperity. Many will add a petition for world peace or some other symbolic nonsense. What we don’t do is praise Him. Why? Because by praising God we know we would recognize our hypocrisy, that we will feel our own unending inadequacy, therefore it is easier and safer not to offer praise.

Yet there are abundant reasons for us to pray and not just on a designated day each year. Today we are a divided nation. The ever popular quest for diversification has led to this division. Everyone has an opinion and thanks to social networks and blogs like this one we all have a stage to voice those opinions. Throw diversification into the recipe, along with a pinch of fairness and a dash of tolerance, we end up with unchallenged, errant and immoral thoughts. And there is nobody to stand up and say it is wrong. Meaningless.

Recently we have decided that a fifteen year old girl can swallow a pill to end a life, without consulting anyone, not even her parents. Don’t we see how we devalue life in the name of...what? Fairness? Privacy? Can’t anyone see this is wrong? Did you consider that fifteen year old girl may have been just fourteen yesterday? Somehow in one day she was able to go from being a child to having the knowledge and wisdom to make a decision that will kill? Has anyone told her about life? Meaningless.

The dreadful conditions of politics today go well beyond red or blue, right or left, conservative or liberal. We have no leadership. Not in the Whitehouse or the halls of Congress. Not in the Democrat or Republican parties. These elected leaders spend all their time throwing vocal spears across the aisle, blaming, pointing accusing fingers. Yet never solving, and never leading. Meaningless.

Even in the church there is division and sadly a lack of leadership. Everyone is good at not offending, by allowing what was once called wrong, once called sin to enter the church unchallenged, but it ends there. Where are the men or women who stood at the pulpit declaring the gospel? Leaders who were not afraid to say words like “repent”, “sin” or “Jesus Christ”. Instead they gather on a day of prayer and ask for guidance. Open the Bible, the guidance is there. They ask for health or wealth. They ask for comfort for those who suffered loss at the hands of man or nature. They ask for a brighter future. Everything they ask for is meaningless! Meaningless because by the end of the day they will have forgotten who they prayed for. By tomorrow they will forgotten who they prayed to. Meaningless.

Every day I awaken to more depressing news, yet I can’t seem to turn off the television. I have lived too many years to not know that changing the channel doesn’t change the news. I no longer think about the future as a place of opportunity, now it is just more despair in waiting. Where did we go wrong as a nation, as a people? I long for the past. What was wrong with being honest? What was wrong with baseball and apple pie, knowing your neighbor’s name and going to church? What was wrong with being a family? When did we stop learning from the past? When did we start re-writing history, leaving out anything that may be construed as offensive? When did we stop electing leaders? When did we lose our meaning?

On this National Day of Prayer I gathered with no one. Instead I pulled over on the side of small dirt road east of San Antonio and spoke to God. I told him what I told you, about values that have gone away, about leaders that are no more. I told him that I believed our nation was in a dark downward spiral that may not end. I told him I was afraid. And then I waited and listened. I cried.

He answered, “I knew.”

He knew this day would come. He knew that I would be sitting here on the side of the road...waiting. He knew that not only this nation but the whole world would one day turn their backs on Him. He knew that babies would be thrown away as if rubbish. He knew bombs would destroy the souls of cities.  He knew churches would be burned because people hate. He knew that man would imagine other gods. He knew that in our arrogance we would change His perfect design of family. He knew we would hide His name.

He knew all this from the beginning. He knew with just a wave of his powerful hand he could erase it all and begin again.

But He didn’t.  

Instead He sent his Son to die for us. He did this already knowing. He did this for you and for me.

My prayer tonight on this National Day of Prayer-“I know.”