Life in a Graveyard – Patterson Prayer Friends

I was recently riding the train and listening to the song below:

This song speaks of the only treasure we can hold on to being in Christ. Fame, youth, beauty, wealth, wisdom - all fade into dust. Knowing Christ is the only hope for our souls.

Listening to this on the train, each car stuffed with probably 70 people (of which all 70 looked like they wanted nothing more than to be off of that train and alone in their bed) I looked around and felt as if we were all bobbing in the aftermath of the Titanic sinking, and I was the only one with a life jacket. Statistically, all but maybe 1 or 2 of them are bound for a dark place, of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

I think of my friends here. We’ve hit 100’s of tennis balls, worked on our games together, laughed, drank… I think of my co-workers. We’ve worked hard together in business and achieved great things together. I look forward to seeing these people every week, working hard together, and having a good time.

And every living thing that moved upon the earth perished—birds, livestock, animals, every creature that swarms upon the earth, and all mankind. Of all that was on dry land, everything that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. And every living thing on the face of the earth was destroyed—man and livestock, crawling creatures and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth, and only Noah and those with him in the ark remained.

Genesis 7

God has opened my eyes recently to see that all of these people who are so precious to me, without Jesus, are as dead as all those Noah knew who were blotted out. Each of my friends who does not bend the knee to Jesus is dead, just as every living thing died around Noah.

Strangely, one of my main motivations to move here years ago was to be surrounded by people who want nothing to do with Jesus - to know what that feels like. When you’re keen to the reality of it, it feels like living in a graveyard. I don’t know why I was drawn to this, but now I see the masochism of it. It is deeply chilling and truly frightening.

Moses showed us a prayer for this kind of situation.

Then the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting to all the Israelites. The Lord said to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs I have performed among them? I will strike them down with a plague and destroy them, but I will make you into a nation greater and stronger than they.”

Moses said, “Now may the Lord’s strength be displayed, just as you have declared: ‘The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’ In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.”

The Lord replied, “I have forgiven them, as you asked.”

Numbers 14