Out of Order

My microwave broke this week.  And as a result, it's like the express commuter train that I drive each day was derailed and all the cars were crashing into each other.  You don't realize how dependent you are on a time saving appliance until it breaks.  Fortunately, I have a second microwave in our basement and, after taping a "Do not use" sign to my now defunct appliance, I was making frequent trips up and down the basement steps carrying hot chocolate, tea, steamed broccoli and other items I regularly cook, usually without second thought and fewer steps.

After the appliance guy declared it unrepairable, I lugged the old one upstairs from the basement.  I had lived without a microwave for a whole week, I needed one more accessible to get through the weekend.

This whole scenario reminded me of a laughable sign I saw last January while my family and I were visiting the Young Life ministry headquarters in Colorado Springs, CO.  They were renovating the humble office space, adding some additional cubicles and painting some walls, but as we walked by one room that had recently been updated, I read a sign that stopped me in my tracks. The room was labeled "Prayer Room" and the office maintenance workers had posted a sign below that read, "OUT OF ORDER, sorry for the inconvenience".

I snapped a picture that I now keep in my office/prayer closet. First, to make me laugh, and second to let the irony remind me that our prayer room shouldn't ever be out of order -  although appliances may break down, our prayer lives don't have to.

But honestly, there are times when my prayers feel as ill equipped to reach God as my microwave is in heating up a cup of water.  Hard as I try, at times, I can't seem to carve out enough silence or solitude to focus enough to allow my heart to formulate a genuine prayer, let alone be in a position to receive a leading from the Lord.  Do I just need to heat up my prayers?  Try harder?  I just don't know.

When my microwave started going out, we noticed that the food wasn't heating up as quickly as it did before.  But why is it that the subtlety of my luke-warm prayers go mostly unnoticed? It's as if I need a maintenance guy to place a sign on me somewhere visible, "Out of Order, in Need of Maintenance."

Matters of the soul should be treated with the same urgency as an appliance repair. I need to make a call to the 24/7 maintenance guy and schedule a house call.  My prayer life should be something upon which I am just as dependent the ability to as my cup of hot water or my steamed broccoli.

But that's the challenge with soul care - it's largely done by me, for me for my own benefit. And yet, when I neglect matters of the soul, it's not only to the detriment of myself, but to the detriment of all those around me.  Like the derailed train - all the cars crash into the other.

Lord, I need you to be the maintenance repair guy and make a house call.  Teach me to pray. Not just before meals or at bedtime, but teach me to pray throughout the day without ceasing.  Help me to prioritize spiritual disciplines like study, journaling, prayer, worship, solitude above matters that are more tangible and are seemingly more urgent.  Please give me the discipline to pursue you first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening.  Help me to seek your face throughout my day. And please heat up my my defunct devotion. Let me realize my dependence on my healthy prayer life.  Let my prayers not remain Out of Order.