"Vending Machine Faith"

Vending Machine Faith

I’ve been thinking a lot about faith lately and the quality of my own. How deep does it go?  How dependent is it on certain desired outcomes?  I worry that I may sometimes find myself exhibiting what I like to think of as a “vending machine” approach to living the Gospel.  You put in the coinage of compliance to certain commandments and out pops the desired blessing.  After all, the Lord has stated that there is a law irrevocably decreed upon which all blessings are predicated and it is by obedience to that law that those blessings are obtained.  (D&C:130: 20-21)  Cause and effect, right?

Haven’t we all been in the following scenario? We carefully insert our four quarters into the designated slot of the vending machine and then we expect the immediate release of that can of Diet Coke (Caffeine Free of course) or that snickers candy bar or bag of pretzels. And after maybe 5 seconds if we don’t see the product being released or hear it drop into the slot where we can easily slide our hand in to retrieve it we begin to experience the entire spectrum of human indignation ranging from deep disappointment to total outrage. Ok, maybe I’m being overly dramatic, but I was so looking forward to the little bag of pretzels that never released from it’s lofty perch inside the machine. I could almost taste their salty crunchiness and dog-gone-it those were my hard-earned quarters I put in.

The problem I see with Vending Machine faith as a way to live the Gospel is that when we don’t get the desired outcome as fast as we may think we should we may be tempted to pound on the machine and label it as broken, and we may even go looking for the absentee manager and demand a refund or accuse him of trying to deceive us and yell that we have been robbed! I have to admit that I have gone to a store’s proprietor before and with self-righteous indignation informed him that I was a victim of his machine’s malfunction and demanded my four quarters be restored to me. This sense of injustice is heightened if I happen to be with any of my grand-children and it is their item that is not delivered on cue. I mean how can they trust a world that doesn't deliver what it's supposed to! 

In my life I’ve come to find that often the desired blessings do come and sometimes even on cue.  But I’ve also found that when they don’t then that is when we have the opportunity to receive a different  kind of blessing. And this usually doesn’t come in the form of something that happens TO us but rather IN us. This is the chance to develop what I call the "But If Not" kind of faith. 

This “But If Not” faith was exhibited by three of my scriptural heroes, Meshach, Shadrach, and Abed-nego.  Several years ago on the eve of getting the results of tests that would reveal whether my sister, Rita’s cancer had spread to the extent that we worried it had, I found myself desperately pounding on the vending machine. Her tests had not been going well. POUND POUND. She had been in a lot of pain. POUND POUND. We had planned to grow old together. POUND POUND POUND. It was then that I came to desire more of the "But If Not" kind of faith that those three men of the Old Testsment who I have come to love taught me about. In the dark hours of that dark night after several hours of pacing the fear-filled floor of my faithless thoughts I wrote this tribute to them. I share it with you now in this season of counting our blessings, in case any of you, like me, sometimes need to be reminded that not all blessings come when and how we desire, but through continued faithfulness they do indeed come.   

                            

                                         Meshach        Shadrach         Abed-nego

                                                        An Interrogative

“If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods…”  Daniel 3:17

Meshach    Shadrach    Abed-nego

Their names whisper a rhythm.

The very syllables – a mantra.

The soothing  shh  shh

of shach and shad

steady my stance

at the edge of the furnace.

They seemed so calm.

No record of rising blood pressure,

adrenal rush, or racing pulse.

Daniel does not speak of

dry mouths, wet palms

or even breaking into a sweat.

And yet,

I want to know -

Did they swallow hard at the sound

of cornet, harp and psaltery?

Did they wince upon hearing

the temperature would be

seven times hot?

It appears not.

Instead,

they said,

“If it be so our God is able to deliver us.”

Such subjunctive fluency!

When did they learn a vocabulary so full of faith?

shhh   shhh

Our God is able.

How nice to have an able God

Who CAN deliver you.

Even heathens would like a god with such

Ability.

But

“IF, iF…

If is not a word in heathens’ tongue -

A word of such

humility.

They had total trust in HIM,

not in what he might or might not do

for them.

They understood the past and future tense

of faith and repentance.

And so they spoke that

subjunctive clause,

without a pause

or so the record shows.

Through gas and flame

they stayed the same.

Did they ever call out His name?

Did their nostrils sting of burning hosen?

Or were they frozen

in heaven’s insulation?

When in the heat I start to tremble,

Can someone like me

ever resemble

this faithful threesome?

In that moment when the heat is rising,

could I be so un compromising

in the language that I speak?

When the temperature is seven times hot,

will I see His form

and say,

“But if not.”