THIS DAY [T, 10-8-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—THIS DAY [T, 10-8-24]

 

 

As a child, my mother taught me to pray each night as I fell asleep: Now I lay me down to sleep/I pray the Lord my soul to keep/if I should die before I wake/I pray the Lord my soul to take.

I’ve heard some folks say they were traumatized by that prayer as children, afraid to go to sleep for fear they’d die in their sleep and their souls would be taken, whatever that meant. Well, yes, I understand that. But I wasn’t that much concerned about the Lord’s activities. It was the devil that got my attention.

I was so worried that the devil might get me that I had dreams about him, red tail and pitchfork and all. He would be chasing me down the upstairs hallway of our house. In desperation, I would take off my red and blue felt house slippers and throw them at him. Having the Lord get my soul instead of the devil sounded like a good deal.

Also, I liked little poems that rhymed. Sleep/keep. Wake/take. They were easy to remember.

When I was a young preacher, I began to hear other preachers do a rather consistent sermon about night-time soul taking. They knew someone or had heard of someone who had gone to a revival meeting and refused to respond to the altar call to be saved. Sometimes the preacher had made a personal plea/invitation to that sinner, but it was usually at a revival service, although when I started preaching, many of my churches expected me to give an altar call at the end of every worship service, not just at revivals.

Anyway, after refusing the call to salvation, that night the recalcitrant died, usually in a spectacular and violent way, in a car crash or house fire. Then the dramatic question: If that happens to you tonight, where will you spend eternity?

I was much impressed by those sermons. They were dramatic. I thought it would be great to use those stories in my own preaching. Really get people’s attention.

There was a problem, though. I didn’t believe that God would damn a person to hell just because they didn’t have some emotional experience where they proclaimed Jesus as savior.

That wasn’t just because I was trying to avoid the devil. I wasn’t a very experienced Bible scholar then, but the God of the Bible didn’t include sending people to hell forever. Old Testament writers didn’t even believe in hell. They talked about Sheol, but that wasn’t the hell of modern theology, the hell of eternal punishment. It was just where the dead went, whether they’d been good or bad.

More importantly, Jesus didn’t seem to be overly concerned about where people would spend eternity. He was interested in the present. People needed to be saved from the sins of greed and lust and revenge…and all the others, now…thy kingdom come, on earth… “Come, follow me…”

So I preached a different kind of sermon, with the same kind of story, but with a different question at the end. This kind, like this one I heard from a fellow preacher.

His teen son wanted to use the car while his parents were out one night. His father said no, that he could not take the car. He did not think he was a good enough driver yet. The boy took the car anyway, and got into a terrible wreck. By the time his parents got to the hospital, both his legs were already amputated. The boy said, “Can you forgive me? I can live without my legs if I’m forgiven…”

Those old preachers were right. The decision is now. But it is not a decision about eternity. That’s not why we follow Jesus, why we worship God, why we yearn for salvation. The decision is not about everlasting life. It’s about life right now.

This day…God’s kingdom… This day…bread for this earthly body… This day…forgiveness as we forgive… This day…safety from temptation…This day…God’s power and glory…This day…now and forever…

This day… if I should die before I wake…

John Robert McFarland