Prayer surprises me in the hard times because I think I’m just coming before Him to ask for His help with this need, for His quick fix of this problem. But then His Spirit comes and opens up my heart, and suddenly He is showing me my fear and lack of faith. His deep and tender love for me in the midst of my anxiety. His presence that has never left me though I have paid Him little attention in all my fretting. His ability in the incarnation and the cross to relate to my suffering. His faithfulness to shepherd my frail heart through the valley of the shadow of death. His desire to refine and strengthen me through the disciplining of my heart. His glory as my soul relinquishes the things of earth that are now failing me, and begins to love and long for the things of Heaven. He shows me myself, and more importantly, He shows me Himself as I come to prayer in times of trial.

Prayer surprises me in the good times because I start off thanking Him for all the good things that He has given me. A lot of times, if I’m honest, it starts off as a duty. I whisper words of thanks because I know I should. But then His Spirit comes and opens up my heart. And suddenly He is showing me what more He has given that I have not yet thanked Him for, the small and the big. He moves me to thank Him for mercies that I had not seen because I had not taken much time to look. He moves me to thank Him for the hard things that I once thought surely could not have come from His hand. He moves me to have compassion for those who do not have – be it material goods, or less tangible things such as hope, joy, salvation. He moves me to thank Him for Himself.

It is no wonder, then, that James exhorts us to pray, and to pray for one another. He wants to give us the gift of Himself. And in Him, we have everything that we could ever truly need.

The middle class is a tricky category to fall into. You are not poor enough to have the tight confines of an extremely restricted budget – spending to survive with anything more hardly being an option. You do not feel you are rich enough to be associated with the superficial, self-absorbed Real Housewives of Timbuktu. You work hard, you pay your taxes, pay your bills, and you try to enjoy some nice things here and there. Nothing too over the top, most of the time.

But I think there is a very real danger of then just doing things, buying nice things, and avoiding the hard things, just because we can. The danger is in the deep, sharp claws lurking in the corner of Pottery Barn, disguised in pretty candlelight and flowers. I rarely go there but I had a gift card, and could feel myself being wooed, beckoned, seduced into it all. Start with decorating the living room, but if you’re going to do that, then you want to redo the dining room, in which case the bathrooms need touching up. And suddenly the bedroom looks awfully dull and outdated too. Do it. You can afford it. Others can’t. But you can.

“This place is dangerous,” I said to the stylish but not overly uptight gentleman at the register.

“That’s what I hear. But we’re safe. We don’t bite. Come in, come in.”

I remember an interview with Bill Clinton shortly after the Monica Lewinsky scandal. A reporter asked him, “Why did you do it?” His simple but unsettling reply: “Because I could.” It wasn’t that he could because he was the President of the United States. She was there. She was not saying no. His ego, fed by a woman’s eyes who said he was everything he longed to be, edged out his conscience. His loins burned away the red flags of self-restraint. Do it. You can afford it. Others can’t. But you can.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I have lived most of my life fighting to learn how to be nicer to myself, fighting to learn that it is ok to rest from my labor, my striving, and enjoy the grace and blessings that God intends for us to enjoy. But when I walk into Pottery Barn and feel the strong, intentionally designed pull on not just my wanting but my sense of needing these things, I have to wonder what that is, where it comes from.

I think part of our susceptibility to that insidious pull comes from the fact that we are not, on a visceral level, entirely convinced that our world is much bigger than the 25-mile radius that encircles the majority of our days. Within my 25-mile radius, I would say most homes have some pretty Pottery Barn purchases. I’ve got to keep up, because isn’t it a part of who I am, who I am becoming as a working, middle-class woman?

Then, for a moment, I look at the fine print. “Made in Thailand.”

And then I remember the men, women and children whom I spent a summer with in Chiang Mai. I remember pledging to them that I would not forget their stories. How they fought the cycles of poverty so that their children would not have to see sex slavery as their only option for an income, for survival. How the orphans traveled unbelievable journeys to be free from abuse and the threat of the sex trafficking industry. How they didn’t need Pottery Barn to feel settled, content, respected, valued. They needed safety, love, and people who would hear their cries and advocate on their behalf.

They feel so far away now, in both time and space. But then I look at the fine print, and here they are, in my 25-mile radius. Reminding me. Humbling me. Asking me to think, not full of cynical criticism, but humbly and critically again about how I am letting my 25-mile radius reduce my vision and my ambitions to something so much smaller than what God ever intended for my life. Hopefully they are still a part of who I am, and who I am becoming as a working, middle-class woman.

What if I were to turn from my sin, because that’s ultimately what it is, sin. James 4:17 says, “Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.” What if I start to do the less selfish, rather than the more selfish things, because the grace of God in my life now says that I can? It could be dangerous. And it could be really, really good.

But if I take a moment to think about it, I would say that the satisfaction from a quick fix is almost as fleeting as the speed of the fix itself. The fulfillment and joy that comes from something that took a lot more work, that cost a lot more, runs deeper and lasts that much longer. Faith that will carry me through long-term dry spells is faith that will carry me through acute crises, and this kind of faith only comes through letting God go deep, beyond the band-aids, beyond the quick fixes. And so we wait, when life seems unclear, when we are not sure what the answers are or when they will come. We wait because we see the example of Jesus, who trusted the sovereign goodness of His Father even when the Father forsook His Son for a period so that we would never be forsaken. We wait because our Savior overcame death, the ultimate source of despair, to show that there was nothing in the short or the long-term that He was not in control of.

His work in our lives is good. His reign in our lives is wise. He is worthy of our trust, worth of our perseverance, and so worthy of our praise.

Ira Chui preached a couple weeks ago on our life as a vapor. As a fellow coffee snob, I especially appreciated his use of his ultra-warming coffee carafe to demonstrate how quickly a vapor can dissipate. But I digress. He pointed out the assumptions we make about our lives, how we will do this or that, go here or there, oftentimes without much fear of the Lord or consideration that God in His loving sovereignty may have other plans. As a pediatric ICU nurse, I see patients and families every week who have seen their plans dramatically interrupted. They are facing the reality of that fleeting vapor. We know it happens and yet we never really think it’s going to happen. When it does, we recount and oftentimes regret our words. We wish we had spoken more kindly. We recount and oftentimes regret our priorities. We wish we hadn’t cared so much about money and cared so little about our relationships. I do not and cannot presume to know all the reasons why God allows all the things I see in the ICU, but I do know that there is a different perspective we take on our words, our priorities and our assumptions when we realize that our life is a fleeting vapor.

God in His grace has given us our days here on earth. In His grace, He has given us Christ so that we can be freed of sin. Through Christ, we are given new hearts to speak more graciously, new minds to prioritize life with an eternal perspective, new life in our spirits so that our hope of Heaven gives us a solid foundation here on earth regardless of what interruptions in our plans may come.

Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.   James 4:10