If I Should Wake Before I Die
Illustration
Stories
As we work together with him, we entreat you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.” Look, now is the acceptable time; look, now is the day of salvation! (2 Corinthians 6:1-2)
Alice Gray, creator of the bestselling Stories for the Heart book series, tells a familiar story of a child’s prayer time, but with an eye-opening twist:
“The little boy was saying his bedtime prayers as he had done every night with his dad kneeling beside him. He started with, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.’ Part way through, the little boy got mixed up. ‘If I should wake before I die…’
“Realizing his mistake he stopped in mid-sentence, looked up at his dad, and then started to say the prayer over from the beginning. The father tenderly put his arm around his son’s small shoulders and said, ‘That’s ok. It’s probably the first time that prayer has been said right. For it is my greatest desire that you wake before you die – wake to the truth of knowing Jesus Christ.”
Waking up to Jesus, and what that means about who we are called to be, is the work of a life time. And like the first disciples, as we read in the 22nd chapter of Luke’s Gospel, there are many times along the way when we fall asleep as they did while Jesus was praying in agony:
“He came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. When he reached the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not come into the time of trial.” Then he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me, yet not my will but yours be done…” When he got up from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping because of grief…”
Jesus asks them, “Why are you sleeping?” They didn’t know. They were afraid, as we too so often are, especially in our moments of trial. And they wouldn’t wake up until sometime after the resurrection.
“If I should wake before I die.”
We spend much of our lives sleeping through what is most important. It sometimes takes an illness, a serious crisis or a tragedy to wake us up.
Carolyn Myss writes in Anatomy of the Spirit that, “Those who are in spiritual crisis…have a feeling that something is trying to wake up inside of them. They just don’t know how to see it.”
An 82-year-old retired pastor from Bellows Falls, Vermont, named Charles Friedmann, wrote to me in 2010 about an awakening that occurred after a tragedy in his life when he was a young man:
“I was born in Coney Island, New York which is Brooklyn… My father was Orthodox Jewish, my mother was Episcopalian, non-practicing. My father decided to bring me up Jewish, enrolling me in Hebrew School. At the time of my Bar Mitzvah I decided I did not like the judgmental God I had been taught about, so I would not go through with it. My father was of course dismayed at my decision.
“From that point on,” Charles writes, “I thought of myself as an atheist. But as I began to question religion and began visiting different churches with my friends, I turned more to agnostic thinking.
“I lost my first wife to cancer at 26, was totally devastated and blamed God. I drifted into depression, finally hitting bottom and one day suddenly left my workplace without explanation. I was totally unaware of my actions for several hours during which I walked twelve miles from my workplace, waking up in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, New York. I awoke crying uncontrollably but with a sense of someone sitting beside me, his hand on my shoulder. I saw no one but immediately sensed it was Jesus. He returned me to my senses and has never left my side.”
Charles adds, “Later I met a wonderful girl. Her father was a Presbyterian and a deacon of his church. He told me if I was to continue seeing his daughter I had better start attending church with them. I did. And so began my journey from new convert to Sunday school teacher to lay preacher to ordained minister in the American Baptist Church. When God calls, it is very difficult to decline.”
Charles Friedmann was fully awake.
Alice Gray, creator of the bestselling Stories for the Heart book series, tells a familiar story of a child’s prayer time, but with an eye-opening twist:
“The little boy was saying his bedtime prayers as he had done every night with his dad kneeling beside him. He started with, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.’ Part way through, the little boy got mixed up. ‘If I should wake before I die…’
“Realizing his mistake he stopped in mid-sentence, looked up at his dad, and then started to say the prayer over from the beginning. The father tenderly put his arm around his son’s small shoulders and said, ‘That’s ok. It’s probably the first time that prayer has been said right. For it is my greatest desire that you wake before you die – wake to the truth of knowing Jesus Christ.”
Waking up to Jesus, and what that means about who we are called to be, is the work of a life time. And like the first disciples, as we read in the 22nd chapter of Luke’s Gospel, there are many times along the way when we fall asleep as they did while Jesus was praying in agony:
“He came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. When he reached the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not come into the time of trial.” Then he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me, yet not my will but yours be done…” When he got up from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping because of grief…”
Jesus asks them, “Why are you sleeping?” They didn’t know. They were afraid, as we too so often are, especially in our moments of trial. And they wouldn’t wake up until sometime after the resurrection.
“If I should wake before I die.”
We spend much of our lives sleeping through what is most important. It sometimes takes an illness, a serious crisis or a tragedy to wake us up.
Carolyn Myss writes in Anatomy of the Spirit that, “Those who are in spiritual crisis…have a feeling that something is trying to wake up inside of them. They just don’t know how to see it.”
An 82-year-old retired pastor from Bellows Falls, Vermont, named Charles Friedmann, wrote to me in 2010 about an awakening that occurred after a tragedy in his life when he was a young man:
“I was born in Coney Island, New York which is Brooklyn… My father was Orthodox Jewish, my mother was Episcopalian, non-practicing. My father decided to bring me up Jewish, enrolling me in Hebrew School. At the time of my Bar Mitzvah I decided I did not like the judgmental God I had been taught about, so I would not go through with it. My father was of course dismayed at my decision.
“From that point on,” Charles writes, “I thought of myself as an atheist. But as I began to question religion and began visiting different churches with my friends, I turned more to agnostic thinking.
“I lost my first wife to cancer at 26, was totally devastated and blamed God. I drifted into depression, finally hitting bottom and one day suddenly left my workplace without explanation. I was totally unaware of my actions for several hours during which I walked twelve miles from my workplace, waking up in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, New York. I awoke crying uncontrollably but with a sense of someone sitting beside me, his hand on my shoulder. I saw no one but immediately sensed it was Jesus. He returned me to my senses and has never left my side.”
Charles adds, “Later I met a wonderful girl. Her father was a Presbyterian and a deacon of his church. He told me if I was to continue seeing his daughter I had better start attending church with them. I did. And so began my journey from new convert to Sunday school teacher to lay preacher to ordained minister in the American Baptist Church. When God calls, it is very difficult to decline.”
Charles Friedmann was fully awake.
