When
was the last time you prayed for nothing, nada, zero?
I
can’t recall a time I did that. I can recall praying for something not to
happen, and I can remember not praying, but I can’t remember a time I prayed
for zero.
“Please,
Lord, give ne nothing. Give me zero.”
Margaret
Feinberg can.
In
Fight Back With
Joy: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears, Feinberg recounts how to
respond to people who asked how they could pray for her. Prayer sustained her
and her husband through her breast cancer diagnosis, treatment and surgeries,
so she didn’t take the question as some trifling politeness Christians often
ask in difficult situations like this. (When we don’t know what to say, we can
always ask it.)
She began to answer the questions
with “zero,” as in “zero cancer cells, zero complications, zero side effects,
zero allergic reactions, zero suffering, zero medical errors, zero bad test
results, zero sleepless nights, zero night terrors.”
Feinberg’s prayer was for zero.
For nothing. But it was also everything.
But that might have not been the
outcome. Zero might now have been the answer.
Feinberg turns to the book of
Daniel (I’m finding Daniel in all
kinds of places this week). And she finds an answer in the account of Shadrach,
Meshach and Abednego, the three taken from Jerusalem with Daniel to be trained
in Babylon. They would not worship the statue of gold erected by Nebuchadnezzar.
The king had them taken to the furnace to be burned alive.
And they told the king that their
God could deliver them from death in the furnace. But they acknowledge that
this may not be the outcome. “But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we
will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you
have set up.”
But if not. That’s where Feinberg finds the joy – and the fight with joy.
Feinberg had to consider both a
prayer answered with zero and a prayer answered with but if not. She had
to be prepared for both, and she knew the cancer could be erased, or that it
was still there. And while she may not have felt particularly brave as she
dealt with all of the effects of chemotherapy, she was exactly that. Brave.
Courageous. She had to stare both life and death in the face and be willing to
say but if not.
Her lesson has both personal and
corporate applications personal in how we deal with setbacks, debilitating
illness, death of a loved one, or other personal tragedy. And corporate in what
the church, the body of Christ, is becoming aware of in society.
Storm clouds are gathering for Christians
and the church in Western culture. The storm may not break for a year, or
for ten. But it is coming. We can pray for zero. But we have to consider if the
answer is, instead, but if not.
Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we've been reading Fight Bak with Joy. To see more posts on this chapter, "When Nothing Means Everything," please visit Sarah at Living Between the Lines.
Photograph by Ken Kistler via Public
Domain Pictures. Used with permission.
3 comments:
And herein is love. In the dying. For better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness and health...Father take this cup, but not My will, but Yours be done...Delivered from fire, or not, we're still not going to bow. Greater love has no one than this, that they lay down their life for their friends. Love never fails. No greater love can be shown to no greater a Friend than to pray, answer or no, zero comes or goes...we're still going to love.
Just to pray for strength in the event of the "if nots" does take courage. takes big brave.
And that article you linked to about Gordon... still trying to digest that.
It can be very difficult to get to "but if not" and for sure, some never do. To know and taste His goodness and hold onto His faithfulness--that's a beautiful treasure. Learning and growing. It's all we can do. Thanks Glynn.
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