What Do You Want?

Early this morning I sat down with a steaming coffee. I peered through the blinds and saw—a fresh blanket of snow. A surprise. Light flurries were expected, and here I was looking at a Currier and Ives scene, with fresh, powdery snow still falling. Beautiful it was, and sweet. So here I sit this afternoon. There's a fire in the fireplace, which I've poked a bit to keep it going. I can't wander too far from it before I feel a deep chill, so I'm sitting here close with a laptop and mixed coffee and cocoa (I know—enough with the java).

This past Wednesday was a glorious treat with almost warm temperatures. People traded overcoats for sweatshirts and we all smiled at each other, strangers and friends alike, sharing our comfort and good fortune. Now we're back to extreme cold, having enjoyed the shortest January thaw I think I can remember. So while the beautiful snow scene was nice to wake up to, I miss the sweet foretaste of summer I got this week.

We're into the part of the year when summer seems forever away, and yet these months—January to May—always slip by before you know it. Students live for summer. So do I.

Last summer was like a dream. My family knows I become a rather odd bird come summer. An owl, actually. Nocturnal. I love staying up late. Really late. The hours after midnight are mine--creative hours. I watch them slip by, then I sleep until all hours. I'm never quite sure what will come of my summers. One summer I wrote songs. Another time I arranged a bunch of hymns in neoclassical style. I've learned to just go with the flow and do what seems right to do.

Last summer was different, though. Each night I packed my family off to bed, then I sat up and—spent time with God. I listened to music, prayed, worshiped, sang, played my instruments, but it wasn't about creating stuff this time. Where did it come from? I don't know. Like I said, it was like a dream.

It was the summer I spent praying for my daughter's eyes. I'd lay down in the basement and pray for a while, then come upstairs in the wee hours and lay my hands on her head and pray some more. Incredibly, over the summer, her eyes slowly returned almost to normal.

Toward the end of the summer I would tell friends I just hated to see the summer come to an end. Of course, teachers always get that “oh, you poor thing” look from other working friends. I mean, it's hard to sympathize about a three month vacation coming to a close. It was impossible for me to explain this time, though. It wasn't being lazy I'd miss. I would miss the nocturnal times in God's presence. How would I recoup that kind of time? I couldn't stay up all hours and expect to get up and go to school.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find that although enrollment is up, classes have been arranged in such a way that I only teach four music classes a day. All the classes are taught in the morning. My afternoons are free. All the God-time I spent in the wee hours this summer—that was transferred to the afternoons. I'd teach, eat lunch, grade and plan lessons, then I had precious time to spend with God.

I teach at the Christian school my kids attend. This school meets at my church, and my classes are held just outside the sanctuary. So sometimes I've been going in there to pray. It's like a little vacation every day. A dream time, just like in the summer. And people have been commenting about the presence of God in there. It's not something that's there because I pray in there. It's something I've stumbled on and am happy to enjoy. My pastor sometimes gets drawn in there and goes up front and talks to God and listens to Him. The school principal gets up early just so she can go to school early and walk around in there and pray. And you know, all that prayer doesn't just disappear into the ether or something. Our church is changing. We've gone from a church held back by meaningless ritual to a group of people who arrive Sunday mornings with expectancy.

* * *

This morning before the service I was kind of hanging out in the prayer room by myself, praying and just enjoying that presence of God. I remembered the verse, “Delight thyself also in the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart.” A wonderful verse, but I automatically cringed.

This past summer, the dream summer, I was up in the middle of the night, and I was wondering what I would ask for if God asked me the Solomon question. You know the one. Ask whatever you wish. Wow! What a question. And I was thinking, if I got asked, I would have to be prepared, so I wouldn't blurt out something stupid, like a new car or something. I thought, I should be prepared to ask for wisdom. Wisdom would be good. God really seemed to like it when Solomon asked for wisdom. That's what I would ask for.

So later that summer, unexpectedly, I got the sense one night that the question was on the table. In a cloud of enjoyment of God's presence, there it was: ask what you wish. So I blurted out—I’d like a DSLR camera. Then I cringed and blurted out, no, I want my daughter's eyes to be healed. Then I blurted out, no, wisdom. I want wisdom. Yeah, that's it.

It was a painful fail, and I've regretted the lost opportunity ever since. The God of the universe wrote me a blank check and I asked for a hunk of plastic, glass and metal. And the moment was gone, and I couldn't get it back.

I really had been wanting that DSLR camera. I enjoy taking pictures--the composition, the lighting, the post-processing—all of it. I've been working with a beastly little sub-compact digital for years. I've learned some about composition, and I've learned to trust my eye for things, but when the school bought a new camera last year and I was given the chance to learn it and take charge of it, I immediately saw the advantage of having a better one. Oh, I can think of about a million reasons why I ought to have a DSLR camera, but the bottom line came glaringly through in the midnight test. It was a skewed priority, and my desire to have it told me a lot about myself.

* * *

The camera was a silly thing to ask for anyway. Come fall there would be a little cash income I get each year for extra side work that I do, and I knew I could pick up a camera then. Which I did. I found one used on ebay. I eagerly awaited its arrival, and when it did come in I pulled it out of the box and headed downtown for a memory card and a few accessories, and immediately began snapping pictures. The array of buttons and controls did not intimidate me for long. I'd learned on the school's camera what they all did—f stop, ISO, shutter speed—I was ready to rumble. And rumble I did, snapping hundreds of pictures, posting them for critique, cropping and re-cropping for maximum composition value.

Those free afternoons came in handy, too, and when I wasn't out hunting for subjects to shoot I was scouring the Internet for deals on lenses, filters and other accessories. Life was good, with a fresh burst of enthusiasm for a beloved hobby. And then—I remembered how it had been to spend afternoons with God. I tried to get that back, that drive to connect with Him, that overwhelming sense of His presence, but—something had happened. I tried to tell myself that it was normal, that you couldn't stay on the mountain forever, but—it's no good being hungry and then telling yourself that hunger is normal, you can't stay eating regular meals forever. I think the whole thing about mountaintop experiences being for special times—I just don't believe that anymore. I think you can take the fire of the mountain with you into the valley. I think it can be done. I want the fire of God's presence to go with me always.

Anyhow, I prayed about this. And then I'd go shoot a few pictures, hoping to get some praise pictures or something.

About this time it became clear to me that the problem was on my end. A certain amount of selfishness had crept in, and it would be a good idea to be absolutely ruthless in killing off the flesh. I thought about that, and it seemed the most selfish thing I had done in recent times was – acquire a hunk of plastic, metal and glass. And spend my precious afternoons, my God times, scouring the internet in an effort to feed it and make it a better hunk of metal and glass. My priority had changed. It wasn't God's time anymore.

I thought—fought, actually—for a few days on this. I knew—and still believe—that I could have kept going the way I was going, and I could have led a perfectly Godly life, hung onto my ministries and done a lot of good...but it wasn't the best. There was something better, and it would have been missed. Maybe I'd get another shot at it sometime, someday, but today’s God-time was slipping away.

So the camera is in somebody else's hands now, somebody who isn't an idiot about having shiny new gadgets, somebody who will be served by the camera, rather than serve it. And I—well, the day I handed the camera over I lost what seemed like twenty pounds of useless weight—hanging heavy, right around my heart. I missed it only slightly. That first afternoon I spent a few minutes wondering what to do with my time—no need to scour ebay for a cheap lens and a better eye cup.

That was a couple of months ago. I suppose someday I’ll probably pick up another DSLR, after I’m ready to have it as a servant and not as a master. In the meantime, I’m spending some time reconnecting with God. And started to grow again. And now—I'm learning to cultivate the presence of God in my life, not just in a sanctuary with vaulted ceilings, but between classes, DURING classes, in the car, climbing out of bed in the morning--

This morning, for instance. There I was in the prayer room before service, and there He was, with me. With the verse, the one about delighting in the Lord, unexpectedly, the question was on the table again. What would I ask for? Ask for anything. This time I thought about wisdom, but— God's word tells me I can ask for that one anytime. There's a promise attached to that one. I looked around the little empty—and not so empty—prayer room and realized—God's manifested presence is walking with me these days in ways I've only dreamed. I said, “You've given me the desire of my heart. This is what I want.” With that realization, and with the saying of it, I sensed God's smile.