March 9 2022
TIME TO PRAY.
What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches? (Isaiah 10:3).
I have been re-reading a book by a Harvard Professor, Herbert Benson, MD with the telling title, TIMELESS HEALING, The power and biology of belief.
He, himself a Jew, sees merit in all faiths, as long as there is a degree of commitment. Clinically, he discovered that faith in a higher body, helps recovery from illness, and, in dying, gives grace and comfort. Not surprisingly, church attendance, meeting people, makes them live longer and better. Dr. Benson recommends a simple prayer, repeatedly spoken, such as “The Lord is my shepherd”. I prefer ‘Maranatha, Lord Jesus, Come!” I use it when walking or running.
Prayer is timely.
If there ever is a time for prayer and meditation, for inner emotions to be recognized and ascertained, and for probing the purpose of life, it is now when we are beset with more perils than ever world-wide: Climate Change is accelerating, and military conflict only exacerbates the situation, with world hunger a distinct possibility, as Ukraine and Russia grow much of the world’s wheat.
Me, I can’t stand watching TV anymore. Tears well up when I see the tragedy in Ukraine unfolding. War is terrible, and our war against creation is having identical consequences, increasingly unpredictable weather. There is no doubt in my mind that we effectively live in the last days, beset, as we are, with insoluble problems of our own making.
Look at the boycott of Russian products: ingredients such as oil, natural gas and wheat, are items we ourselves badly need. Mr. Putin is no fool: our banning of all things Russian has a strict time limit: the West needs a quick solution to the Ukrainian crisis, or we ourselves will be the losers.
Prayer is our only help.
If there ever is need for prayer and peace, it is now, at the very time when ‘faith’ is at an all-time low, faith defined as belief in ‘divine’ law, the law summarized by Jesus in Mark 12: 30:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
Dr. Benson, founder of Mind/Body Medical Institute, says that too long have we divided the mind/body spheres, sending faith and reason to opposite corners: Faith a private matter, reason dominating the public domain. We now experience the results of this fateful development, particularly evident in our ecclesiastical enterprise, where ‘religion’ is delegated to the soul, while creation, society, science, business, government, medicine, education, has been completely severed from the divine. That’s why Jesus, in his all-comprehensive ‘love’ commandment, includes all our facilities, the total person: heart, soul, mind and strength.
Time for prayer.
Prayer will not cure the world situation. Prayer will not reverse the Global Heating disaster. Prayer will not restore our aging bodies and give us physical renewal. However, prayer will help us cope with the anxieties attacking us. Prayer can set our minds at peace and, since we are a unity, prayer will also affect our physical wellbeing, still our worries, and prepare us for eternity, and even make us love the perpetrators of evil, many of them are victims of circumstances beyond their control. Prayer will force us to face the reality of the moment, and will grant us true compassion.
Sin and death.
Romans 6: 23 unambiguously states that, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
“Sin” nowadays is not a popular word, perhaps because we, Century 21 people, are totally drenched in sin. When I appear before God’s throne to give account of my life, I don’t stand there as a woman or a man, as a Presbyterian or an Anglican, or as Christian Reformed, Roman Catholic Italian, a Jew or a Muslim, or as a citizen of Canada or Russia or Ukraine: I stand there as a ‘sinner’, deserving death, and having caused ‘the death of creation’ for whose re-birth Christ died: there is no such thing as individual redemption: personal redemption and the redemption of Creation go hand in hand: every Christian must be a sincere creation lover.
Spring is hope.
Yet, it’s spring. The sap in my sugar maples is flowing. The birds are returning. The snow is disappearing, and creation is reviving. The promise of renewal is reverberating throughout the universe, in spite of Ukrainians crying out in agony: Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.
What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches? (Isaiah 10:3).