“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:6)
In all seriousness, I chose Camping and Canoeing because they were easy “A’s”; not only did they offer loads of outdoor time with my friends, but they required “zero” mental strain and labor. So wanting to take one more breeze class, I signed up for Scuba Diving. After the first day of class, I came to a quick realization that this was going to be a different sort of animal altogether. It was to push me to my limits on three personal levels:
(1) Physically it demanded each student to be in great swimming shape. We had to be able to swim 20 laps across the pool and then tread water for 30 minutes before we could even touch the actual scuba equipment. Many students dropped the class once they heard that this was a mandatory requirement to pass.
(2) Mentally you had to learn a lot about the human body’s circulatory and respiratory system. There are two very real risks when you go diving in deep water: Decompression Sickness, otherwise known as the “The Bends”, and Nitrogen Narcosis. The teacher made sure we understood the extreme seriousness of these dangers before we even stuck one toe into the water.
(3) Emotionally this class directly confronted some of your worst fears. The teacher scheduled us to dive in some flooded quarries found in Northern Ohio, where they went 150 feet down into inky black, ice-cold waters. I assure you, 150 feet is really deep and it can feel terribly claustrophobic. As we began to dive these waters I often had to trade partners because after reaching certain depths some students would panic and refuse to go any deeper.
I must tell you…I loved this class and I really came to enjoy Scuba Diving. I would tell other students about my diving experiences and then they would ask me, “Why would anyone choose to subject themselves to the silent prison of such cold black water, not knowing which way was up, or facing the possibility of encountering an angry catfish, a curious nibbling carp or being chased by the dreaded shrieking eels?” (They watched way too much Princess Bride.)
My answer was simple, “It is a strange thrill when you can survive in a place that normally would kill you.” There is a wonder about it. Scuba brought me into the mystery of new sights and strange sounds. I was able to experience things I never had before and saw things relatively few ever did.
One of the first times we put on our Scuba equipment, our teacher put us under a very curious test. He gave us 15 minutes to get familiar with breathing out of a regulator: You would stand in the pool up to your waist, put the regulator into your mouth, and then stick your head under the water while breathing in and out like Darth Vader. It took some practice, but soon we all were comfortable with breathing in the water.
Next, he then had our class go sit with our full equipment on at the bottom of a 15-foot pool. There we sat. Enjoying the experience of breathing freely under water. Out of nowhere, our teacher came swimming down to the bottom with a pair of Scuba fins and proceeded to pull our regulators out of our mouths. Many in the class panicked and quickly swam to the surface. A few of us tried to stay at the bottom to prove we could survive his little test. The only problem was that we couldn’t breath — that is . . .
UNTIL . . .
UNTIL . . .
UNTIL . . .
until we stopped panicking, reached back, grabbed our regulators, placed them in our mouths and started breathing the slow “in and out” Vader pattern again. There we sat…breathing freely, safe and sound, happy that we passed this test.
The key to our survival was experiencing the moment of “Until.”
This is when the human mind realizes two things: Our desperate “need” and the “solution” that is offered to meet that need. “Until” is what made the Scuba experience wonderful.
“Great story, but…seriously, what does this have to do with anything?” Stick with me and you will see. To help explain what I am getting at I ask you to turn to Psalm 73 and read the first 16 verses. I know most of you won’t do this because cracking open your bible is a rare endeavor…so let me explain what it says.
In the first 16 verses, the writer of Psalm 73 is both depressed & distressed. He is trying to be true to God but his life is falling apart. As he looks around, people who have no regard for the things of God seem to be doing fine, and this really ticks him off. So much so, he asks himself in verse 13, “What’s the use? Why be clean, why be pure, why be a good religious guy?” Now it gets exciting, and verse 17 is the key verse to the whole psalm:
“Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.”
The Psalmist was in despair, “Until.” It is just like me in Scuba class, I could not breathe underwater “Until.” It is the way God designed reality. He brings us to the brink of despair so we will reach out for him through the “Until.” (see Romans 11:32) It is that place of solitude, silence, alone where we invite the presence of God to change our perspective, circumstances and our life.
Jesus calls this moment of “Until” the prayer closet, the secret place, a person’s own personal sanctuary. And in the prayer closet, he tells us to “Ask, Seek, and Knock” (Matthew 7:7-8). In Luke 1:5-25, the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, all their dreams to have a child of their own were smashed, that is “Until” Zechariah went into the Holy Place and offered incense, the visible sign of prayer.
When I was in Scuba class, I couldn’t breath underwater “until” I reached for the regulator. The regulator brought “oxygen” down to my lungs so I could survive in 150 feet of the icy dark deep. Often my life is too much for me, “until” I enter the secret place, and my prayer invites the “Actual Presence of God” to come down into my strange world of depression and despair. Oxygen is the physical stuff of the world above water; God’s presence brings to me the Spiritual stuff of heaven. God is just as real and far more powerful and effective than the oxygen he is responsible for creating in the first place.
I want to take this a step further: Just as Scuba diving brought me into “the mystery of new sights and strange sounds. I was able to experience things I never had before and saw things relatively few ever did,” this is even more true with prayer. Wonder is so rare in the church because prayer is so rare. Rarely are we desperate, rarely are we alone, rarely do we reach the point of “Until.” I have found this to be true in my life, and just think, I am a pastor!
I have been really provoked, by both my wife, my life, and the Spirit of God to start taking prayer more seriously. I want to experience his wonder, and to do that I have decided to grab on to the “Until.”
(See the corresponding diagram)
I will never forget the first big dive we went on, we had a class of 20 but only 4 wanted to go down all the way to 150 feet. I was one of the 4, and as we went deeper, the darker and colder it got. It was so dark you could not see your hand before your face, and as you floated in the water it felt like being in outer space, a true Darth Vader experience. I will never forget the moment when my fear turned to marvel. Marvel is the point of reaching total amazement. You can’t describe it, nor can you replicate it, but you can feel it. After the dive, the four of us came slowly out of the water, smiles tattooed on our faces, while the rest of the class was watching on shore.
“How was it?” asked a fellow student. “What was it like?” asked another.
The four of us had nothing to say, nothing. It is the same when God comes directly to answer prayer. I have seen God come in the middle of my impossible and there was nothing to say, nothing. It took me to get to the moment of “Until”, and then wonder and marvel came. It is there, right after the moment of “Until”, that you begin to realize and know that, “God is.”
