Psalm 66:8-20; Genesis 7:1-24; Acts 27:13-38
Friday 15 May - Rev. Jerry Eve
Years ago I had a friend – we were both quite young at the time, and he was an art student who sculpted puppets – and for some reason he prayed asking God to take from him all that was extraneous to his faith. Well, the following week his home was flooded, and most of his puppets were ruined.
I’m sorry to say I laughed when he told me this, but we do need to be careful what we pray for. I read a passage at the start of this week which is absolutely chilling in this respect. It can be found in Judges 11. It’s not one for the faint-hearted, and I sort of wish I hadn’t stumbled across it, so be wary.
‘There are no atheists in foxholes,’ so the saying goes. And many of us might be tempted when we are in extremis to do as the Psalmist does here in verses 13-14 and bargain with God. If you get me out of this mess, I’ll do this, that and the other, we’ll say. Just two thoughts on this: 1) it’s never a good idea, I don’t think, for whatever you’ve said you’ll do to be detrimental to anyone else (as Jephthah did), and 2) there are actually plenty of places throughout the Bible where God says, as in Hosea 6:6, just for an example, ‘I want your constant love, not your sacrifices. I would rather have my people know me than burn offerings to me.’
This, in fact, is something the Psalmist actually acknowledges when in verse 18 we have, ‘If I had ignored my sins, the Lord would not have listened to me.’
Just as the Psalmist prays, so too does Paul in our reading from Acts call everyone to worship God (or at least I think this is what he is doing) in verse 35, and my reason for this thought is just how close these words are to those we use for Holy Communion.
Incidentally, I do quite like the reference to this season we have in Acts 27:14. I have actually seen it rendered ‘North Easter’ in some Bibles.
As a follow up to yesterday’s ‘Sailor’s Prayer’, it seems that four years after he’d written those first words, the same sailor had a change of heart, and wrote this instead. Let us pray:
Please dear Father, let me stay
Do not drive me now away.
Wipe away my scalding tears,
And let me stay my thirty years.
Please forgive me all my past,
And things that happened at the mast.
Do not my request refuse,
Let me stay another cruise,
Amen (John William Babbs, 1946).