What Brings Us to Our Knees
When is the last time you fell to your knees—in awe, in terror, in supplication?
Early this week, I learned that someone I knew several years ago had died—tragically and unexpectedly. For the sake of his memory and his family, I do not wish to share any details of that story. But what I will share is this: the manner and suddenness with which he died shook me to the core. I experienced wave after wave of shock and grief and confusion until it felt as though the ground beneath me would give way. Evil had infiltrated my former community and stolen one of the best and brightest lights we had, plunging his family and friends into darkness. “If that happened to him,” I wondered, “What other acts of evil and chaos might be close on the horizon?”
Every night since the beginning of June, the erratic noise of fireworks has been booming and shaking our house. We live near a casino which generously uses the entirety of June to advertise their fireworks for the fourth of July. No matter how prepared I am for the nightly fireworks display, I jump every time the first explosion erupts—usually when Drew and I are sleepily reading in bed.
The night I learned of the death, I had stepped out of bed for a glass of water when the first “bomb” went off. Suddenly, my knees buckled and I felt as though the whole room was swaying. The shock of my former community member’s death plus the explosion made it difficult to find anything solid, anything that would not give way. I gripped the iron railing of our bed and closed my eyes until the swaying passed.
The next day, Drew and I went for a walk and I thought about knees that buckle with terror and knees that bend in worship and prayer and the knees that were keeping me upright and moving.
How is it possible that two very different postures—shock and prayer—equally bring us to our knees?
I wrote the following poem in my phone notes on a park bench in an attempt to hold those two postures together:
These Days
These days
My knees have been giving way,
To what I’m not sure—
Some unseen force of good or evil
Causing time to bend and sway.
All I can figure
From this side of the veil is that
Prayer and mute disbelief
Are perhaps different faces
Of the same thing—
Two shades of ineffable,
Awestruck wondering.
Someday, though now far-off
We may bless
What brings us to our knees.
I once heard a message by theologian John Mark Hicks in which he posited that we are closest to our deceased loved ones not when we visit their gravesites but when we worship and sing together in church. When we worship God, we join the chorus of countless others who’ve gone before us and now worship unceasingly before the throne in heaven. When the apostle John received his Revelation from heaven, this is what he saw:
All who were standing around the Throne—Angels, Elders, Animals—fell on their faces before the Throne and worshiped God, singing:
Oh, Yes!
The blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving,
The honor and power and strength,
To our God forever and ever and ever!
Oh, Yes!(Revelation 7:11-12, MSG)
When we sing to Jesus, we sing with heaven. When we fall on our faces before God, we also kneel with heaven.
This Sunday, we sang “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” As I sang, I remembered I was also worshipping with my dear ones such as Drew’s mother, my Grandfather, and now my former acquaintance. The following verses sent chills down my spine:
And though this world, with devils filled,
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God has willed
His truth to triumph through us.
The prince of darkness grim,
We tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure,
For Lo! His doom is sure;
One little word shall fell him.
I wonder if we kneel so little because our theology of evil is too weak. There are few modern Christian songs that openly acknowledge—much less emphasize—the powerful force of the enemy. The lyrics of this song tell me that the hymnist, Martin Luther, trusted so confidently in the power of his God that the force of evil was something he could actually sing about without fear. Perhaps we also kneel so infrequently because our understanding of God's glory and power is too limited. So often we live with starved imaginations and numb complacency instead of living close to what truly brings us to our knees.
What brings you to your knees? Is it fear, is it worship, is it the desperate pleading for a miracle that has been slow in coming? Is it love?
In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes that God’s long-ordained plan of redemption fulfilled in Jesus coupled with his love for the church is what brings him to his knees.
My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth.
I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in.
And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love.(Ephesians 3:14-18, MSG)
There is something poetic in Paul’s taking to his knees so the Ephesians will be able to stand “with both feet planted firmly on love.” If I’m honest, I have only prayed on my knees a handful of times. It is uncomfortable and I often feel a bit silly doing it. It is an act of humility to lower one’s self physically in the sight of God, and so I tell myself God can hear me just as well from my chair, thank you very much.
But I want to be a person who kneels in prayer, not just out of fear. I wonder if our knees buckle when we’re afraid because being brought to our knees in a posture of prayer is precisely what times of tragedy and chaos require. Perhaps it is not only the forces of evil and darkness which cause our knees to weaken in terror, but the gracious hand of God drawing us closer to the safe and solid ground of God’s love.
The combined experiences of tragic loss and moving worship this week have lead me to the following questions, which I share now as an invitation to you.
How do we become a people who easily bend—on behalf of ourselves and one another—before the Father?
Will we stay close to what brings us to our knees, even when it costs us dearly? Even when, to quote another hymn, “The wrong seems oft’ so strong”?
May the “Yes and Amen” of Jesus teach us to fold in prayer and arise in firmly-planted confidence that all authority and the keys to life and death are in his hands…
…That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Yes, and Amen.
P.S. In order to be present to family and friends this summer I will be posting less frequently on this blog. I look forward to resuming weekly posts in September! Thank you for reading; it is a deep, deep honor to share these words with you.