Undulation on my vacation

In C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape remarked to his demon in training, Wormwood, that we bi-peds are subject to a spiritual phenomenon called "undulation." My goal is the total elimination of undulation from my life. (I also have a goal of zero food wastage in my kitchen, but that also has not yet been completely achieved.)

I exhibited undulation during my summer vacation a few weeks ago. On day one of the trip I got lost when my MapQuest directions threw me a curve. God put me back on track and I rendered heartfelt praise. I would never doubt his love and involvement in my life again!

The very next day I got lost---on the same road. I commenced to fretting as though day one had never happened. All this got me thinking about people in the Bible who were also faith-challenged from time to time. I remembered Obadiah, a man who was in charge of the evil King Ahab's house (1 Kings 18), a secret believer in the Lord, planted in the very court of the king of Judah. This brave man risked his neck hiding 100 prophets in a cave, smuggling them bread and water.

Then Elijah came to see him and gave him a message for the king---and Obadiah blubbered like a girl:

"How have I sinned, that you would give your servant into the hand of Ahab, to kill me? . . . [T]here is no nation or kingdom where my lord has not sent to seek you. And when they would say, 'He is not here,' he would take an oath of the kingdom or nation, that they had not found you. And now you say, 'Go, tell your lord, "Behold, Elijah is here."' And as soon as I have gone from you, the Spirit of the LORD will carry you I know not where. And so, when I come and tell Ahab and he cannot find you, he will kill me, although I your servant has feared the LORD from my youth. Has it not been told my lord what I did when Jezebel killed the prophets of the LORD, how I hid a hundred men of the Lord's prophets by fifties in a cave and fed them with bread and water? And now you say, 'Go, tell your lord, "Behold, Elijah is here"; and he will kill me. . . .'"

Embarrassing. Just like me on day two of my summer vacation. As for Elijah, he comes off looking good in this incident. But flip over to Chapter 19 and it's his turn to waver. How soon we forget God's faithfulness.

Jesus was stunned. He overheard his Apostles discussing their food shortage and said:

"'Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?' They said to him, 'Twelve.' 'And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?' And they said to him, 'Seven.' And he said to them, 'Do you not yet understand?'" (Mark 8:17-21)

Jesus asks us the same question: "Do you not yet understand?"

With all respect to my better brother C.S. Lewis, I depart from him in one thing: I think he errs when he says, "The nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation---the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back. . . ." If I thought that, I would have no hope, and the Lord gives us much cause to hope in something finer, even in this "not yet" era. Elijah and the Apostles, in these unflattering anecdotes, had not yet been baptized with the Spirit. Jesus' band of followers are very different men post-Pentecost. Peter's little lapse recorded in Galatians 2:11-15 is an anomaly, not the rule. And it is evident just reading Paul that a man may live a life free of undulation and inconstancy. Everyone has sin in his past, and occasional stumbles in his Christian life (1 John 1:8). But the grace of God is given that we may not sin (1 John 2:1,5,14; 3:6). And I happen to know people who live that way, with great constancy and faith.

To speak of undulation as our ineluctable destiny while we wear this mortal coil is to rob the saints of hope and to deny the present power of the shed blood of Christ.

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