A doctor friend told me I was eating too much sugar. He has a gift for stating the obvious.
On his advice, I set out to go an entire month without sugar – in any of its delightful and insidious forms. It was so the right thing to do. But it wasn’t easy. I fell off… No, make that jumped off… I jumped off the wagon a couple of times, but I was much more successful that I ever imagined possible – and much better off for the effort. And for these past few weeks I have been maintaining low-sugar intake.
God-talk can be like that.
When you commit to seriously talking with and listening to God, be prepared. God may cause – or allow – every bad choice, every casual sin, every thoughtless decision to come home to roost. If you want to talk to God, if you want to hear from God, in a serious manner – not just the quick, perfunctory and convenient kind of God-talk most of us settle for… If you want a genuine, adult, intimate conversation with God, you’ll probably have to work your way through piles of refuse generated by days or months or years of allowing sugary-sweet now-I-lay-me-done-to-sleep prayers to pass for real conversation.
But it is so worth it.
When I started on this prayer journey, my life was a mess. It still is. Bad choices, impulsive decisions and unacknowledged mistakes litter my world like Lego blocks and Hot Wheels after our youngest grandson has come for a visit. Not to mention the fruits of my deliberate selfishness and misdeeds.
God said, “Clean up your mess, son, then we’ll talk.”
Workin’ on that, Abba. Workin’ on that.
But here is the other side of what I have found. We don’t have to clean up the whole mess. We just have to begin cleaning up the mess. We soon find Father stooping beside us and joining in. In fact, he does most of the heavy lifting. And while we are down on the floor, working together, clearing away the mess, we talk – real, honest, loving conversation. No sugar. No empty fluff. Just Abba and I being friends.
And that’s the good stuff.
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