I have been praying in recent months, “Lord, teach me to number my days, that I might have a heart of wisdom.” During that time, I collapsed twice, once in public, turning mustard-colored and clocking a pulse of 34 beats per minute.

Yesterday a doctor phoned and taught me two new words — “ventricular trachycardia” — which put me in a weird zone all day. Suddenly there was an urgency to living — a need to make things right with a few people, an utter insipidness in worldly music and pastimes.

But it didn’t dawn on me till last night that this was all a direct answer to the aforementioned prayer.

I believe there is a problem with our praying, which God drolly illustrates in the incident in which Mark’s house church prays for Peter’s release from prison and then doesn’t believe he is at the door knocking (Acts 12).

Charles Finney tells of the days before his conversion: “On one occasion, when I was in one of the prayer meetings, some of the attendees asked if I wanted them to pray for me. I told them no, because I did not see that God answered their prayers.” Ouch.

“On further reading of my Bible, it struck me that their prayers were not answered because they did not comply with the conditions upon which God had promised to answer prayer. They did not pray in faith, in the sense of expecting God to give them the thing for which they asked.”

Elijah on Mt. Carmel bowed in strenuous prayer for God to send rain, and kept sending his servant to check the sky at intervals for signs of clouds. This is the kind of “watchful” (Colossians 4:2) prayer God wants.

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Here and there in my Bible I have written in the margin the initials D.A.P., a friend of mine whose memory the verse evokes. It is a remarkable thing when this happens — that a passage one has read numerous times, to no particular profit, is elucidated by the recollection of a person’s example.

Today it was 1 John 2:14: “I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.”

I do not know if you have had the privilege of knowing someone who has “overcome the evil one” or someone who is genuinely “strong” in the Lord or in whom “the word of God lives.” If you have not, you may gloss over the verse as I have always done. It is easy enough to do because the mind has many subterfuges. We tell ourselves the meaning of the text is simply that we are Christians, pure and simple; we have overcome the evil one in the sense that we have been converted.

Blessed is the person to whom God sends living, breathing illustrations of His Word. I think we have had no idea of the power of a faithful life in the building up of the saints — and oppositely, of the harm done to our brothers and sisters when we fail to live a life in the power in which we were meant to live it. For some reason too deep for me to understand, God is pleased to more fully open our understanding of His Word when we see it fleshed out in another human being. There is much more afoot in hermeneutics than science.

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My African Violet was withered by the sun, and so badly that it looked dead, beyond resuscitation.

The sight of a plant this droopy and lifeless, its leaves curled in on itself, is a gruesome thing, especially if you have known the creature in better times, in its turgid, boastful purple and green days.

I got a whole new perspective on the condition, however, when I learned on NPR’s “You Bet Your Garden” that this shriveling and scoliosis of the stems is the plant’s natural emergency mechanism for saving itself. What looked to me like a resignation to death was in fact a heroic grasp for life. My brave little potted friend was struggling to conserve what little strength it had left, in hopes, perchance, of a late summer rain (since its negligent human caretaker had gone away for a week and left no surrogate).

My mind made the leap from herbs to men. One encounters people throughout one’s life who look like damaged goods. And no doubt they are. Droopy and lifeless, or curled in on themselves, they look gruesome and make the onlooker recoil and turn away.

The plant withered because it was trying to save itself. The unappealing person caved in with depression or addiction or surliness is trying to save himself too. The lesson from the African Violet—and a cardinal rule for understanding human behavior—is that no one does anything for no reason. You need to find the reason. And just knowing that there is one stirs my compassion.

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Emotion has always been a touchy subject in the church. Perhaps it’s because we have all been deceived by our emotions at one time or another—and we won’t be had again!

On the other hand, we have all been deceived by our intellect at one time or another too. Some of us remember the romantic philosophical escapades of the 60s flower children. Many of them went into banking afterwards. Hitting the brick wall of reality and the necessity of earning a living tends to cure both shallow emotionalism and shallow philosophicalism. As C.S. Lewis says, “five minutes’ genuine toothache would reveal the romantic sorrows for the nonsense they were.”

Jesus died, I presume, to save us from both deceptions, the emotional and the intellectual kinds. He means to redeem and sanctify all the spare parts that are man, including emotion and intellect. Nevertheless, it is curious to see a residual suspicion of human emotions that is not seen with regard to human intellect. If one meets a person who is more joyful or enthusiastic about Jesus than he is, he keeps the “fanatic” at arm’s length.

I see contrary evidence in the Bible. The people of God ooze with emotion: “Tell of his works with songs of joy” (Psalm 107:22) “I will sing and make music with all my soul. Awake, harp and lyre!” (Psalm 108:1,2). Ah, that’s just cultic worship being described, you say. Fair enough, how about this one:

“My mouth is filled with your praise, declaring your splendor all day long” (Psalm 71:8).

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You’ve heard of claustrophobia, agoraphobia, and xenophobia (and I’ll bet there is even a fear of blogs). But I would say our most prevalent fear is fear of bad news—forever bracing for the other shoe to drop.

The distinction of the righteous man, according to Psalm 112:7, is that he is “not afraid of bad news.” This is very good news.

The verse does not say the righteous man will have no bad news, only that he will have no fear of it. It’s the fear that eats us up, more than the bad news itself. Bad situations can be borne if taken one minute at a time.

Suffering is bad enough, but constant fear of the next suffering is what is unbearable. The unrighteous live in constant morbid suspense, even in good times (“The wicked flee when no one pursues” – Proverbs 28:1). The righteous live in constant peace, even in bad times (“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies” – Psalm 23:5)

The desert is a given. Both the righteous and the unrighteous find themselves in it. But the righteous finds refreshment at every turn: “He will make it a place of springs” (Psalm 84:6). He will “drink from the brook by the way” (Psalm 110:7). The secret to this is divulged in the second half of the verse: “He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord (Psalm 110:7).

I heard a serene woman say: “I used to think happy days were the calm before the storm. But I am learning to trust God.” Oh for courage to trust God’s love enough to stop fearing bad news—and to start living in sweet liberty.

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“They spoke against God, saying, ‘Can God spread a table in the desert?’ When he struck the rock, water gushed out, and streams flowed abundantly. But can he also give us food?” (Psalm 78:19,20).

The solution to stubborn unbelief is not miracles. There are never enough miracles; there is always another request. Another objection.

The rich man in hell pleaded with Abraham across the chasm in heaven to send an apparition to his brothers: “If someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent” (Luke 16:30). Abraham replied, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”

That seems ludicrous! Of course I would believe if someone appeared to me from the dead!

But would I really? One likes to think so. And certainly for the first hours, or days, one is completely convinced. But Father Abraham was a savvy psychologist. Life is a succession of moments, one moment succeeding another, one moment questioning the certainties of the previous moments. Certainty will fade over time like Moses’ shekinah shine behind the veil. (This is the weekend retreat syndrome, by the way—a mountaintop experience that sinks back to the doldrums.)

I have often asked God for miracles to prove his love. But nowadays I ask for spiritual eyes to see what He has already made clear.

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“Flirtation” is such a precious word. It almost seems to have petticoats and frills.

But flirtation is treachery. The person who is flirting is setting a trap. Her goal is to get you to desire her, and to be miserable in your desire. She holds out golden apples in silver settings, but you cannot have them.

I’m writing this post because a married man I know saw a small photo of a flirtatious woman that accompanied an article in a magazine (a Christian magazine, no less), and he was awake all night thinking about her. In other words, this was not even a direct hit — demonstrating the power of flirtation even once removed.

For my money, the best defense against a flirt is to see it through God’s eyes:

“…She appeared to be contorting her all but invisible face and writhing her smokelike body in a quite meaningless fashion. At last I came to the conclusion—incredible as it seemed—that she supposed herself still capable of attracting them and was trying to do so. She was a thing that had become incapable of conceiving conversation save as a means to that end. If a corpse already liquid with decay had arisen from the coffin, smeared its gums with lipstick, and attempted a flirtation, the result could not have been more appalling. In the end she muttered ‘Stupid creatures,’ and turned back to the bus” (C.S.Lewis, The Great Divorce).

And the best defense against becoming a flirt, based on 1 Timothy 5:1, is to treat men your age like brothers and younger men like sons.

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There is nothing tidy about the Christian life, and that goes double if you have a paying job that doesn’t require your body somewhere between 9 and 5. What happens then is that the looks of your day will be a reflection of what you think is important to God. Not in a prefab way but as a running improvisation.

An hour of Bible at dawn is non-negotiable (“I will not neglect your word” Psalm 119:16). An hour of prayer-walking with Spider is also a given (“Devote yourselves to prayer” Colossians 4:2; “physical training is of value” – 1 Timothy 4:8).

You set out to do something toward earning a living, because “if anyone does not provide for his relatives…he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” — 1 Timothy 5:8.

Then the phone rings. It has rung all morning, but you’ve let the answering machine do triage. You look up from your work, remembering that God also wants you to “love your neighbor.”

When “love your neighbor” and “provide for the members of your household” seem to conflict, you may go in a couple of directions — say no to your neighbor and trust that God will provide for her in some other way, or say no to your work and trust that God will provide for you and your family anyway. It’s the germ of faith in the choice that God looks for.

At the end of the day the canvas is messy — with daubs of “Love your neighbor” here, and streaks of “Provide for your relatives” there, and smudges of “Be devoted to prayer” and smears of “I will not neglect your word.” But it’s a mess you made trying to please Him, and He sees that and smiles.

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“Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to a city to dwell in; hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress” (Psalm 107:4)

Bill P. was snagged by alcohol at age 10, by cocaine at 14, and then by homosexual lust. At age 20 he asked the Lord to let him sleep and not wake up: “All I wanted was for the pain to end.” He made a fortune in Dallas but ended on death’s door in Cozumel, Mexico. Two men named Mickey and Gabriel drove him to the border. After another suicide attempt, someone from his mother’s church got him to the Colony of Mercy. Chaplain Jim Freed gave him a Bible. He read and got set free.

“Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in affliction and in irons….Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress” (Psalm 107:10,13).

Chris C. robbed drug dealers in Atlantic City. He was often “comped” in casino hotels, but, of course, the house always wins. “The same casinos that put me up in $2,000 a night rooms were now having me arrested for eating out of their dumpster.” He was driven to the Colony of Mercy in the trunk of his Mom’s car (long story). Lying low in the Colony chapel to make good his escape, he read a Bible left open at Colossians 1:19-21.

“Some were fools through their sinful ways….They loathed any kind of food, and they drew near to the gates of death. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress” (Psalm 107:19).

William Raws was a promising artist in England in the late 19th century, who got his first taste of alcohol when he married a high society lady at age twenty-one. Drink’s price tag was their fortune, their property, their marriage, and the day they stood at the gravesite of their three-year-old daughter. Penniless and near death from the effects of rum, he staggered into his room and cried out to God. God heard and saved him. In 1897 William Raws founded the Keswick Colony of Mercy in Whiting, New Jersey.

“Let them extol Him in the congregation of the people….He turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water” (Psalm 107:32,35).

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If God’s presence in Esther is more palpable for His not being mentioned by name, so is Satan’s presence in Ezra and Nehemiah. We never see the overflowing ashtrays and half-drunk cups of coffee on his desk, as we did in his mischief with righteous Job (Job 1) and unrighteous Ahab (1 Kings 22).

After seventy years of exile in Persia (and, for all appearances, the death of the dream that was Israel), two Israelite leaders are spotted back in town to rebuild. It is the smallest of trickles, but as chilling a tiding for Satan as the sighting of Edmund in the land of Narnia for the White Witch.

Satan works by proxies. Israel has natural enemies in the Jerusalem area. With Satan, they see in Ezra and Nehemiah the writing on the wall of their ineluctable demise. They start with oily kindness (Ezra 4:1ff), spurious offers to help (Nehemiah 6:11), devious appeals for dialogue (Nehemiah 6:4). They shift tactics to discouragement, and undermining counselors, varying this with intimidation (5:3,4). They pen poisoned letters to King Artaxerses (4:11ff), and then King Darius (5:6). Bandits line the roads from Persia. Still the rebuilding goes on.

Vexed at the ineptness of Israel’s foes, Satan unsheathes a tried-and-true strategy — Jew against Jew. Resettled Israelites are committing usury against fellow Israelites (Nehemiah 5). Tobias the Ammonite, unable to destroy Israel by force, worms his way in by intermarriage and friendship (Nehemiah 13).

In all of this, Israel prevails, seeking hard after God, building the walls with trowel in one hand and sword in the other.

If you are pretty much sitting out the dance as a Christian, Satan may be leaving you alone with his polymorphous onslaughts. But if you are involved in God’s kingdom building, be expecting trouble. The taunts of your next door neighbor and the acting up of your arthritis may be more than meets the eye.

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