The blahs

I get a magazine from the Voice of the Martyrs, and every month there are true stories like this one:

"… Quechua Christians … were attacked by members of the Maoist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso. The guerrillas burned churches and houses, killing pastors in some villages. I met Alejandro when I went to have my shoes repaired at his shop. As he walked around his dirt-floor shop in creaky plastic legs, he told how twice a week he walks farther into the mountains to share the gospel. 'I just keep walking for Jesus.'"

Alejandro has no legs and lives on a dirt floor and seems to be doing great spiritually. Meanwhile, I have the blahs today. I woke up not feeling like doing anything, and that alarmed me. In Peru the enemy of the brethren is the Sendero Luminoso. But here in the suburbs the enemy is "the blahs." I don't know how widespread the disease is, but I can tell it isn't only me.

In my case, "the blahs" manifested this morning in a sense that praying doesn't matter much, that there is not much power, and that there is very little reason to get out of bed and work. (You will notice in these inner voices an anti-gospel piped up from hell.)

Jill, Eustace, Prince Rilian, and Puddleglum in C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair encountered something like "the blahs" when the Lady of the Green Kirtle sprinkled magic dust on them that made their minds dull and forgetful and uninterested in Narnia. They had nearly gone under for the third time when Puddleglum stamped out the evil imposter queen's enchanted fire, and the group returned to their senses and their zeal for truth and for Narnia.

We pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters abroad, and rightly so. But let us also pray for grace to be shaken from our Western enemy, "the blahs." My guess is that in American Christianity more casualties to the faith have come from "the blahs" than from every other cause of apostasy combined. The antidote is to first of all notice that it is going on, and then to rebuke it in the name of Jesus, and to determine by the grace of God to persevere.