Problems

Problems

When a believing person prays, great things happen. (James 5:16)

Imagine yourself in a dark room with the windows closed, the curtains drawn and the blinds blocked. It’s hard to believe in the darkness that there’s daylight outside those drapes. So you grope around, trying to feel your way across the floor. You take a step – disoriented and unsure of where you’re headed. Progress is slow and the journey’s painful: stubbed toes and bruised shins. It’s hard to walk around in a dark place. It’s harder still to walk around in a dark world. But we try, don’t we? And we get wounded in the process – tripping over problems, bumping into each other in the shadows, and ramming into walls.

But occasionally one of us makes a discovery. Reaching through the blackness, a hand finds the curtains and then the window latch. “Hey, the walls have windows!” And then the drapes are pulled back, the window’s opened and sunlight floods the room. What was dark is now bright. What was opaque is now clear. What was stale is now fresh. With the light comes a peace, a power, a desire to move closer to the light, and a confidence to step forward. Our timid steps are replaced by a certainty to our walk; a certainty in moving through the corridors of life, opening one window after another to illuminate the darkness. What a difference. And all it took was opening the curtains and raising the window.

Prayer does the same thing. Prayer is the window that God has placed in the walls of our world. If we leave it shut, the world becomes a cold, dark place. But throw back the curtains and we see His light. Open the window and we hear His voice. Open the window of prayer and we invoke the presence of God in our world. Here’s what I mean.

Imagine that you’re at your best friend’s wedding reception. The two of you have talked about this day since you were kids, and now it’s finally here. The ceremony was great, and the wedding was beautiful; the minister was flawless and the vows were honest. Wow, what a day! “I’ll take care of the reception,” you had volunteered long ago. So, you planned the best party possible. You hired the band, rented the hall, catered the meal, decorated the room, and asked Aunt Tessie to bake the cake. (Yes, I had an Aunt Tessie)

Now the band is playing and the guests are milling about, but Aunt Tessie’s nowhere to be seen. Everything’s here but the cake. So, you ring her up. She’s been napping. She thought the wedding was next week. Great. Now what do you do? Talk about a problem. Everything’s here but the cake. Sound familiar?

Well, it might. It’s exactly the dilemma that Jesus’ mother, Mary, was facing – sort of. The wedding was moving, the guests were celebrating, but the wine was gone. Back then, wine was to a wedding like cake is to one today. Can you imagine a wedding without cake? Well, they couldn’t imagine a wedding without wine. To offer wine was to show respect to your guests. Not to offer wine at a wedding was … well … an insult.

Mary faced a social problem. You know. A foul-up; a snafu; a calamity on a somewhat common scale. No need to call 911, but you can’t sweep the embarrassment under the rug, either. And when you think about it, most of the problems we face are similar in scope. Seldom do we have to deal with dilemmas of a national scale, or which have world import. Seldom do our crises rock the Richter scale. Usually, the waves we ride are made by pebbles, not oceans. We’re late for a meeting; we leave something at the office; a co-worker forgets a report; mail gets lost; traffic gets snarled. Generally speaking, the waves rocking our lives are not life-threatening. But then again they can be because a poor response to a simple problem can light a fuse. What begins as a snowflake can snowball into an avalanche unless proper care is taken.

For that reason please note then how Mary reacted to the situation. Her solution is a practical plan for untangling life’s knots. “They have no more wine,” she told Jesus. (John 2:3) That’s it. That’s all she said. She didn’t go ballistic. She simply assessed the problem and gave it to Christ. Charles Kettering, the famed inventor and head of research for GM said, “A problem well-stated is half-solved.” Mary would have liked that, because that’s what she did – she defined the problem.

Now, granted, she could have exploded: “Why didn’t you plan better? There’s not enough wine! Whose fault is this anyway? You guys never do anything right. If anything is to be done right around here I have to do it myself!” Or she could have imploded: “This is my fault, I failed. I’m to blame. I deserve it. If only I’d majored in the culinary arts. I’m a failure in life.”

It’s so easy to focus on everything but the solution isn’t it? But Mary didn’t do that. She simply looked at the knot, assessed it, and took it to the right person. “I’ve got one here I can’t untie, Jesus.” “When all the wine was gone Jesus’ mother said to him, ‘They have no more wine’.” Please note that she took the problem to Jesus before she took it to anyone else. An acquaintance of mine told me about a tense deacons’ meeting he once attended. Apparently, there was more agitation than agreement, and after a lengthy discussion someone suggested, “Why don’t we pray about it?” to which another questioned, “Has it come to that?” Really?

But what causes us to think of prayer as the last option rather than the first? I think there’s at least two reasons: feelings of independence and feelings of insignificance.

Sometimes we’re independent. We begin to think we’re big enough to solve our own problems. For instance, at our house we’ve had a banner year. Our youngest daughter is just finishing up her first year of high school; another daughter just changed jobs resulting in more pay and benefits; and another is getting married in October; our youngest son and his wife are doing well in the entertainment industry; another son is to the HVAC industry what MacGyver was to tinker toys; and another son’s an attorney. My wife and I have applauded and celebrated each accomplishment our children have made. Their maturity and mobility is good and necessary, but I hope they never get to the point where they’re too grown up to call their mom and dad. I think God feels the same way about us.

Other times we don’t feel independent; we feel insignificant, instead. We think, “Sure, Mary can take her problems to Jesus. She’s his mother. But he doesn’t want to hear my problems. Besides, he’s got famines and earthquakes to deal with. I don’t want to trouble him with my messes.” If that’s your thought, however, consider this: “Because he delights in me, he saved me.” (Ps. 18:19)

And you probably thought he saved you because of your decency. You thought he saved you because of your good works or good attitude or good looks. Sorry. If that were the case, your salvation would have been lost when your language went south or your works got weak. There are many reasons God saves you: to bring glory to himself, to appease his justice, to demonstrate his sovereignty. But one of the sweetest reasons God saved you is because he is fond of you. He likes having you around. He thinks you are the best thing to come down the pike in quite awhile. “As a man rejoices over his new wife, so your God will rejoice over you.” (Isa. 62:5)

As Max Lucado says, “If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If he had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning. Whenever you want to talk, he’ll listen. He can live anywhere in the universe, and he chose your heart. And the Christmas gift he sent you in Bethlehem? Face it, friend. He’s crazy about you.” Yep, that’s right. So, the last thing you should worry about is being a nuisance to God. All you need to concentrate on is doing what he tells you to do.

Note the sequence of events in the next three verses about the wineless wedding: “Jesus said to the servants, ‘fill the jars with water.’ So they filled the jars to the top. Then he said to them, ‘Now take some out and give it to the master of the feast.’ So they took the water to the master. When he tasted it, the water had become wine.” (John 2:7-9)

See the sequence?

First the jars were filled with water. Then Jesus instructed the servants to take the water (not the wine) to the master. Now, if I’m a servant, I’m thinkin’ I’m not too crazy about that idea. I mean, how is that going to solve the problem? And what is the master going to say when I give him a cup of water? But these servants were either naïve enough, or trusting enough, to do what Jesus said. And so the problem was solved. Oh yeah, and note that the water became wine after they had obeyed, not before.

What if the servants had refused? What if they’d said, “No way”? Or, to bring the point closer to home, what if you refuse? What if you identify the problem, take it to Jesus, and then refuse to do what he says? That’s possible. Right? After all, God is asking you to take some pretty gutsy steps. For instance, money is tight, but he still asks you to give. You’ve been offended, but he still asks you to forgive. Someone else blew the assignment, but he still asks you to be patient. You can’t see God’s face, but he still asks you to pray.

These are not commands for the faint of faith. But then again, he wouldn’t ask you to do it if he thought you couldn’t. So go ahead. Next time you face a common calamity, follow Mary’s example:

Identify the problem. (You’ll half-solve it)

Present it to Jesus. (He’s happy to help)

Do what he says. (No matter how crazy)

And then get Aunt Tessie a new calendar.

Grace,

Randy