When at the dentist

I went to the dentist yesterday, and as my teeth are at the stage of being patched and re-patched, they blotted out an hour and a half for me. At some point in the ordeal I decided to pray for the man who had his hands in my mouth, and for his assistant Joan.

That's not the news. The news is that I don't ever do that. Nor do I normally pray for the cashier as she is scanning my groceries, nor the waitress who is bringing my order.

I went to a restaurant a few months ago with a pastor and his wife, and I notice he prayed for the waitress. That simple act went far with me. Isn't it amazing how godliness lived out is a much more powerful instructor than godliness merely preached?

What the Wormleysburg, Pa., pastor's Pizza Hut prayer made me realize was that the most authentic Christianity is the round-the-clock variety. When you are in Christ, you are never "off duty." You have "shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace" (Ephesians 6:15). You are "ready in season and out of season" (2 Timothy 4:2). Every season is God's.

The old way in my Christian life was to be always preparing to live for God. Satan was well pleased. We do a lot more talking about the Christian life than living it, seems to me. We prepare in seminary. Then we prepare on Sunday morning. We prepare at retreats, and fill our notebooks with great weekend insights that land on the shelf. How many times have I practically knocked over spiritually dying people trying to get to the women's Bible study on time? That's the parable of the Good Samaritan.

So I have started praying for random people-at the mall, at the cemetery where I walk. One benefit I find is that if you pray for the person you pass at the mall, you cannot simultaneously judge him, lust after him, or engage in any other fleshly preoccupation. I think this new posture is taking on a momentum of its own and producing a new lifestyle. It primes the pump, you see, and creates a groove between oneself and God that gets deeper and more natural day by day.

(Rondu, I don't know if that will do for Ephesians 6:15, but it is what came to mind today.)

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