The prevailing conditions
Years ago in the front of my Honours thesis I wrote a quote by Annie Dillard from ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek’ about the "great hurrah" of wild animals. It went with the picture of Eucalypt the kangaroo caught on the alert with an overflowing mouthful of grass. I had never read ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek’ but stole the quote from another book called ‘Wild Ice’ about Antarctica (I have a dormant love of wild places and wild creatures and a corresponding section in my book collection). Anyway, the other day I came across the recommended book list on the 'Desiring God' website, through meandering google searches, and top of the list under literature was ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek’. I didn’t realize that Annie Dillard regarded this work as a "theological treatise" rather than a reflection on nature. It won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1974 and I am now on a mission to obtain this book.
Then, the other day I came across this random quote, curiously also by Annie Dillard:
On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the Catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? ... It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.
I have no real idea of Annie Dillard’s theology – yet - and I don’t know where she gets a sleeping God from (maybe Psalm 44, but see Psalm 121:3) but it does snap one to attention. We had a sermon on Sunday night on 2 Peter 3 about being sufficiently sensible of conditions, and the sort of people we ought to be in response, living holy and godly lives as we wait for Christ’s return.
Annie’s quote reminds me also of Ephesians 1:19-21. The same power that raised Christ from the dead is the power at work in us and for us, to strengthen our faith and help us comprehend the dimensions of God’s love (Ephesians 3:14-19 is one of my all time favourite prayers) ... and if only we did grasp that how differently we would live.