Meetings for Debate and Times for Prayer

I had the occasion to catch up with a number of old friends. The forum was late-nite fellowship over beers at an Eastern Orthodox book store. I knew I would be surrounded with friends who would want to rally me to their views from the Eastern Christianity. I knew I could easily be lured into debate that might likely turn argumentative and not profitable. But I care for my friends, and face-time is highly valuable. Plus, there was always the chance to learn and transmit real edifying knowledge. So I went home first, to sort of check with God and see if it was right or okay to go to this forum. What I found happening instead was something I hadn't done in a long time . . .

The moment my day ended and I walked through the door, instead of hitting the fridge, turning on the radio, cracking open a book, or calling a friend on the phone. I went in my exhaustion and in my semi-happiness over a hard-worked day, and I kneeled before my bed just to talk to God about the feelings in my heart--mostly feelings of pleasant weariness--but weariness all the same. But what I found myself asking was "Lord, can you really again be the vibrance, the refreshing, the companion that I want for in this moment? Can you really guide and feed me? Can you give me answers and equipping?"

I really did enjoy that time. I mean enjoyed it. I say that only because I don't always enjoy it. I think I so often give God "sloppy seconds", instead of spotless first fruits.

I did go to that meeting. There was plenty of discussion, plumbing the depths of Calvinism, Armenianism, the back story of Satan and his willful fall, God's energies versus his essence. It was all brilliant, a little bit heated, but mostly enjoyable and community building. I really think men in the room were seeking the community of men. I think they were striving to show what they knew, to add to their knowledge, to be affirmed in their stretchings to think, to be allowed to speak, to ask, to dream, to imagine, to dwell on their God. To work out their anxieties.

I hope God allows for these things. I think He must sometimes delight in them. I know he has set boundaries to what we can know: Mystery!

But the healthiness of the event was for me the prayer that went on before it. And the prayer I offered each one as I exited. I had the opportunity to close our debates and our deepest questions in a prayer for each man. And that community of blessing each other and loving each other covered over in an instant all of the ways in which we had priorly been extra-challenging each other. It's spectacular what God sometimes does in our full days. Especially when he is really invited into them.