Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the Lord loves rests between his shoulders.-Deuteronomy 33:12

Today I had a really good prayer, the kind where, when I was through talking, I actually felt the love of God. I felt so safe, so protected, as if God was holding me in the palm of his hands.

I love days like this, because they are fairly rare. Since the days when I was first baptized, I haven't felt "in love with" God all the time, or on a predictable basis. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I love my friends and family, but it doesn't feel like an overwhelming emotional love all the time. That is part of the daily struggle of being a Christian, to not just go through the motions of having a relationship with God, but to constantly seek a real connection in all possible ways: physical, intellectual, spiritual and emotional.

So today I felt a real connection, which made me feel like whatever happens in this world, I will be okay because God is in control. And God loves me.

A good day.

I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. -Matthew 21: 21-22

Hot Tub Baptism

One man remembered Travis from another church
some years back, where one night in a prayer frenzy
folks had laid hands on the boy’s twisted limbs,

cried Hallelujah and pushed him out
his wheelchair to stumble his first step.
While we were eating dinner before the baptism,

the story made its way down the potluck line
like a parable of another church’s arrogance
in an unbelieving generation, testing the power of God.

Later, we stood under a full moon around the hot tub
singing grace and glory, hands in our pockets,
as crisp brown leaves and grit blew at our faces.

Two college boys shouldered Travis,
knee-deep into the water, his frailty balanced there
as they asked him whether Jesus was his lord.

When he said yes they lowered him
as careful as an infant in a bath,
sure to submerge every part for cleansing.

His was a baptism of chlorine and bits of leaves,
a momentary submersion into heat,
a gasp as he emerged shocked and shivering.

We could not help but picture him falling
when they’d pushed him, extending his unreliable
thin legs like he was the lowered cripple

who Jesus told to take up his mat and walk.
We imagined Travis looked up from the floor
and smiled upon this failure of faith.

After the baptism we wrapped his wet body in blankets,
bore him to his chair and pushed him inside
the meeting hall where we all stood in line to squeeze
his shoulders, unable to fully draw him in our arms.

My mom also told me the story of her favorite miracle. I have no memory of this happening, but I have heard the story a few times over the years. It always makes me smile.

One summer when I was a very small child, my dad announced that he was going to poison the dandelions in the yard. I said, "No Daddy! I like the flowers in the yard!" My dad insisted that the lawn needed sprayed, so I got on my knees and prayed: "Dear God, please don't let the dandelions die." Then I went back to playing.

My dad sprayed the yard. According to my mother, it was a beautiful sunny day. And according to my mother, not a single dandelion on our property died.

Three weeks later, my dad tried again. This time he didn't tell me what he intended to do. He used the same bottle of poison as the previous attempt, and this time, all the dandelions died.

My mother calls this a miracle, a moment when God heeded the prayer of a little girl who loved flowers. I think so too, and, like all miracles, it demonstrated, at least to my parents, the power of prayer. It is such a small thing. But it is still a miracle. I only wish I responded to problems now in the same childlike way. I would probably have a lot less trouble in this world.

So last night my mom and I had this great discussion about miracles. This is related to the topic of the man in Kiev eaten by lions (see the last blog) and a general question I have about how we, as Christians in the modern day world, are supposed to view miracles.

Now I believe that miracles happen on this earth. I've seen a few things happen that I could only classify as miracles. But when I think about the subject, it takes me back to a few years ago when a member of my church was baptized at a retreat in the mountains. His name was Travis, and he was (and still is) a wonderful, encouraging person, always smiling broadly from his wheelchair.

His baptism that autumn night was in a hot tub. A few men from the church lifted him from his chair and lowered him into the hot tub, he said that Jesus was Lord, and then he was submersed in the warm water. I was so struck by this moment that I would later write a poem about this experience.

Just before the baptism, at dinner, another man from the church had been talking about Travis. He had been a member of the same church as Travis, years ago. He remembered one night where the church laid their hands on Travis' frail body, prayed for him to be healed, and then told him to get up and walk. Travis, smiling, got up from his wheelchair. And he fell.

This bothered me. When I told it to my mom last night, she said, "Well, it was worth a try, wasn't it?" And I had to agree that yes, it might have been worth the try. But when he was being baptized, when he was lifted from the water and wrapped in towels and blankets so he wouldn't catch cold, when he was rushed inside where we all lined up to hug him, I kept picturing him falling. And I wondered, is it wrong for a church to expect such a miracle? Was it wrong for us not to try the same thing?

In the Bible, miracles seem to function as evidence of the power of God. When Daniel survived the lion's den, King Darius was impressed with God's power:

Then King Darius wrote to all the peoples, nations and men of every language throughout the land: "I issue a decree that in every part of my kingdom people must fear and reverence the God of Daniel. He rescues and he saves; he performs signs and wonders in the heavens and on the earth. He has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions." -Daniel 12:25-27

The New Testament also discusses miracles in this fashion, especially when it comes to Jesus' miracles and those performed by the early church. The books of Matthew and John both emphasize the miracles as proof that Jesus is the Messiah. Consider what Jesus himself says in John 10:37-38:

Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.

So, that said, what do we do with the issue of miracles in our modern-day church? Can we expect the crippled to get up and walk?

Today I read a story about a man in Kiev who tried to be a modern-day Daniel. He lowered himself on a rope into a lion's attraction at the zoo. He shouted that God, if he existed, would save him. And he was promptly killed by a lion.

Here's a link to the story:
http://news.aol.com/strange/story/_a/lioness-kills-man-who-enters-zoo-cage/n20060605083809990002?cid=936

I find this so unbelievably sad. But I think most people who have sought God at some point in their lives can relate to this man's experiment. We are always looking for evidence of God, for proof that he exists and he is powerful and that he cares about us. We try to test God, in order to affirm our belief in Him.

For me, this test was about a dog. The summer that I was twenty-one, I spent with my mother in our house in Idaho Falls. My younger brother had died that previous April. Our whole family was devastated, but none more than my mother and me. Our dog had died the previous winter. My old cat had died a few days after my brother. The house that summer was dark and empty without my brother or the animals.

Early in the summer it seemed like God had given us a gift. My mother brought home a stray dog she'd found wandering in the neighborhood. The dog was a half-lab, half whippet, or something of that sort. She was a medium-sized dog with short yellow fur, long and silky ears, understanding brown eyes, and an intuitive sense of when to be quiet and when to be silly. My mother and I called the dog Lydia. We said she was the perfect dog.

I noticed right away that Lydia was not good with cars. She had a tendency to stand in the middle of the road. We lived on a long, straight road with few stopsigns, where cars and logging trucks rushed by all day and night. That summer, I laid in bed and prayed every night that God would keep Lydia safe. I did more than pray. I bargained. I challenged. I told God that my family had been through enough. I didn't understand how a benevolent God could allow my brother to die, but if he didn't protect that little dog it just might push me into becoming an atheist.

Later that summer, I came home from a movie to find that little sweet dog dead on the side of the road. It was a crushing blow to me. Just thinking about it can still bring tears to me eyes. I did not become an atheist. But I was lost for a long time. And, while I have had nearly 7 years to think about this incident, I still don't quite know how to take it. For the longest time it felt like a time when God had failed me.

The rational part of me says that dogs who stand on the road get hit. Men who jump into lions dens get eaten. The spiritual part of me looks for the way that God has used Lydia's death in my life. It reminds me that we are not supposed to test God. But I always feel a bit confused about what is testing God and what is asking for a miracle. The subject of miracles has also been a fascinating one for me.