Vending Machine God
Feeling hungry after an active morning of jumping, skipping and playing with the toddlers in my music class, I headed down the hall to the snack machines. I looked at all the selections, put in my coins and waited for some Cheezits to fall into my hungry hands. Nothing.
I tried hitting the coin return. Nothing.
I pushed the numbers again.
Waited. Nothing.
I tried the pretzels. The M and M's. The snickers bar. Absolutely nothing.
My stomach grumbled in protest as I banged on the glass and gave the machine a little shake. Since the machine is bigger than I am and weighs at least five thousand pounds, this attempt was pretty pathetic, kinda like a chihuahua barking at a great dane. I was working myself into a barking frenzy when I noticed several people looking at me strangely.
I stomped back to class, mumbling about temperamental vending machines.
Do you ever treat God like a vending machine?
Last week at A World of Music, Michael, age 6, was explaining to me and my co-worker Ngaire, how he prays to God when he is afraid:
"I pray and ask God to help me not to be scared anymore and He does 'cause God obeys me."
God obeys me.
Does that phrase startle you a little? It does me. Michael is a talker and sometimes I park my brain in neutral when he chatters on and on. But that statement put my brain immediately back in gear.
Who would dare say such a thing? We obey God. Not the other way around. Just thinking such a thing gives me images of being burned at the stake for heresy.
God obeys me.
As adults we wouldn't dare say that, but sometimes I think, deep down inside, we believe this to be true. Vickie Arruda says, "We act out what we believe, not what we know." And sometimes I think we believe God is a giant vending machine. We place our prayers into the coin slot and push some buttons, making our selections. And then we expect God to come through, to spit out what we want.
In other words, we expect God to obey us.
When our prayers become demands and our faith becomes control, we have a problem. We find ourselves looking at God as a vending machine and I don't know about you, but I find that thought very disturbing.