Awake you sleeper!

DAILY BYTE

A preacher had a friend who had no interest in church or God whatsoever. The preacher was forever trying to convince him to come along to church, to at least give it a try. Finally the man agreed. The preacher was thrilled. That week he pulled out all the stops as he prepared a carefully crafted sermon, masterfully arguing the case for belief in God. Sunday came and sure enough his friend was in church, and so the preacher delivered the sermon with everything he had. There was passion, there was conviction, there were stirring illustrations and dramatic pauses. At one stage what he was saying even brought a tear to his own eye. Afterwards he felt quietly confident that this must have surely been a breakthrough moment for his friend.

The next day the two of them met for coffee. Unable to contain his curiosity the preacher asked, ‘So, what did you think of my sermon?’ The man replied, ‘To be completely honest, I have to admit that your sermon kept me awake for most of the night.’

The preacher was delighted. “I’m so glad the message got through to you,” he said, “and that you’ve started grappling with the whole idea of God.”

“Oh no,” replied his friend, “that’s not it at all. It’s just that I can never sleep at night when I’ve had a good snooze in the day.”

That little story contains a few nuggets of truth. The first is this. Quite frankly, some sermons probably are best experienced asleep. (As a preacher, I should know!)

Secondly, the story reveals the fundamental inadequacy of human words to articulate the mysteries of God. It’s a humbling reminder not just to preacher types like me, but to all of us, that even our best efforts to give expression to who God is fall laughably short of the truth.

Thirdly, the story suggests that there are many who are, in fact, asleep to the things of God. We doze our way through our days, sleepwalking through our lives, never fully awakening to the Holy God who is in our midst.

And yet, there is this yearning within us all for an experience of the infinite. There is a hunger within us for the divine. As St Augustine famously put it – there is a God-shaped void within all of us that only God can fill.

And sometimes, on a still, starry night; or as the first rays of a rising sun dance across the ocean; or when you hear the miracle of a baby’s laugh; or when you sit by the bedside of a loved one who is dying; or in the varied experiences of great love or great suffering; or when you’re overwhelmed by the undeserved generosity of family and friends; or in those ordinary, yet surprising moments when the distracting noises and voices all around are suddenly stilled; then sometimes the longing within us for God takes hold with an urgent intensity that will not let us go. And in those moments we awaken to the great truth that we have been shaped to be instruments of praise, to the
glory of God.

PRAY AS YOU GO

O God, awaken us from our slumbering ways, that we might see you and know you as the God that you are and that we have been shaped to be instruments of praise. Awaken us that we might come to see that we have been made for you, and that apart from you our lives amount to nothing at all. Amen.

SCRIPTURE READING

Luke 9:32

“Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory.”