Dry

I had a conversation recently about how we were once filled with the love of God and awe and wonder, but for many of us our ethics and daily routine and even our prayers have grown cold, lifeless – and even as we remain faithful to our baptismal vows, we are by no means “a light of revelation to the nations” (Luke 2:32; Matthew 5:14).

One reason this is so: We fell in love with this Person, Jesus Christ, whom we met in the Gospels. If he’s a teacher, I want to be his student. If he’s a Master, I want to be his disciple. If he’s God, I want to be his worshipper!  But then somehow the scriptures – especially the four Gospels that led us to the Person of Christ – stopped being our anchor, our lifeline, our daily bread. We still pray the prayers and try to do the do’s and don’t the don’ts. But if the life and love has gone out of our faith, then we need to look and see where it went.

Here’s a text you won’t see quoted often – 2 Kings 6:1-7. The company of prophets (seminary students if you will) are traveling with Elisha, when one of them swings his axe and the head flies off and is lost in a pond. Elisha says, “Where did you last have it?” He goes there, and by Grace he causes the axe head to float and it’s recovered.

Where did you last have the axe head? What was your life of study and prayer and action like, the last time you were full of the Holy Spirit? “You have turned away from your first love. Think about how far you have fallen! Turn away from your sins. Do the things you did at first” (Revelation 2:4-5). Besides giving alms, going to church, and struggling for the virtues, I can almost guarantee you were meeting the Lord daily in the scriptures, especially in the Gospels. And you had some kind of practice of prayer.

Experience says that with time spent apart from the light of truth, our horizons narrow. Our vision of God and of hope becomes distant and uninspiring. This quote from Chuang Tzu keeps coming to mind:

“A frog in a well cannot discuss the ocean, because he is limited by the size of his well. A summer insect cannot discuss ice, because it knows only its own season. A narrow-minded scholar cannot discuss the Way, because he is constrained by his teachings. Now you have come out of your banks and seen the Great Ocean. You now know your own inferiority, so it is now possible to discuss great principles with you.”   
  — quoted in The Way of Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton

And so, together with Saint Paul, “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.” (Ephesians 1:17-21)

Let us pray for ourselves as well: “We want to see Jesus!” (John 12:21) and then let us “keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it” (Joshua 1:8). “Do not let these words out of your sight, keep them within your heart; for they are life to those who find them.” (Proverbs 4:20-22). And finally, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (James 1:22).

Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou wrote:

An Elder on Mount Athos once experienced acute spiritual drought. He sat down and said to the enemy: “You murderer of men, you have taken my mind, you have taken my heart, and I cannot pray; but you cannot take my body. I will pray with my body.”  He began to make prostrations and soon his heart became warm. Prayer was then restored in him.

The enemy cannot deprive us of our inspiration and freedom to say the Jesus Prayer, making a bow and the sign of the cross at each invocation of the Name of the Lord. Has the adversary taken our minds and hearts? We will pray with our mouth, with our body, until the Lord is well-pleased to come to our help. Then we will be able to pray with compunction and many tears.
  — from Wavering in Quest of the Kingdom Which Cannot be Moved