An Unexpected 'Answer' to Prayer

It was Saturday morning. I had eaten, and then knelt to pray in the front room, head resting on an ottoman, trying to be still enough to not wake April or Daniel. I could feel the warmth of the sun already heating the walls at my back. I had awakened that morning to a warm, brightly lit California dawn that seemed to go from sunrise to full bronze furnace in just moments. The heat stirred up a slight breeze of air already warm, quickly sucking the moisture out of the night’s dewy grass of the front lawn even though it was in the shade. I glanced over my shoulder at the lawn through the front room window.

Although each blade was drooping slightly, it would last. I would water it heavily after sunset. I knew the tiny garden of corn, squash and tomatoes in the back would soon be parched by the hot sun. It was barely a month old, and the tiny leaflets of freshly sprouted seeds would need a good soaking to make it through the day. I sighed, gave thanks to God, and rose from the ottoman to go to the kitchen and get a drink of water. As I gulped down the cool liquid, I eyed the tiny blades of corn that were a little over ankle-high. They were already drooping.

With another sigh, I placed the remaining points to be prayed over firmly in my mind, and stepped outside to soak the garden. Once the hose was through erupting burps of air and water, a steady gush of cool water flowed strongly out along the trenches that I had created alongside each row of the garden. The seeds would be soaked from all sides. While the water gushed and flowed, I watched the butterflies and beetles escaping the man-created flood - butterflies easily fluttering away, while beetles occasionally had to swim for it. “Perspective”, I thought to myself. “That’s what we all need to stay out of the sudden floods that trouble life. "Perspective”. I felt more like the beetles than the butterflies. It seemed I often ran from an onrushing torrent of problems, only to trip and fall headlong into another torrent. Then I must swim, like the beetles, and hope to stumble up on a dry shore soon.

I had run from the flood of problems at Western Washington University to start my own business in Santa Rosa. Many good things had happened while I was racing across the long dry stretch between troubles. We had a child now, Daniel, just a few months old. April was more beautiful than ever, and seemed the perfect mother. Our home was calm, quiet, large and comfortable - cool in the summer, thanks to the large walnut tree that shaded it. Snugly built, it was warmed in the winter by a gas furnace that poured hot air through metal grates into the center of the house - I supposed that was why it was called “central heating”.

I had thought I would find a steady job quickly, but weeks had turned to months, and months into almost a year. Somehow we always got by financially. I was a programmer at a time when programmers were rare, and heavily in demand. I had been trained by IBM, and had an aptitude for it. I did well on every contract, so the contracts trickled in, one at a time, and we hung on. I wasn’t overly concerned, but was beginning to wonder if this string of good fortune could keep up forever. All it would take is for one contract to end without another to take its place, and in just a month or two we could be in serious trouble.

The garden was soaked. With a few rusty squeaks of protest, I twisted the spigot and turned off the water. The water level trapped in the trenches surrounding my rows of seeds was going down, but so slowly that it was hardly noticeable. The ground was soaked enough to last until evening. I stood up, looked at the bright blue sky with joy and appreciation, and returned to the house, poured a cup of coffee and found my way to the ottoman. Soon my forehead was firmly applied to it, a towel thrown over my head to prevent the shadows of the shrubs and the trees, blown about by the gentle breeze outside from distracting me. When I prayed I liked to focus on praying, and often prayed for an hour or more. My prayers were more like a long, slow mental journey through the Bible, searching for scriptures from memory that would serve as the basis for hope that my needs as presented before the Lord, might be heard and answered with some direction or help. Usually, I prayed for direction. I prayed for direction about large decisions and little ones. I tried to use all the information that I could glean from myself, others, books - even TV sometimes - to help me make a rational decision. But then, I would present my arguments and case before the Lord, asking for his additional enlightenment. I had learned long ago that I could often take all the facts and arrange them improperly, to make a very nice case for the wrong conclusion. Only God never made such a mistake, I reasoned.

He had the perspective of the Butterfly, lifting higher and higher above the flood of little troubles down on earth. He didn’t have to try to piece together the big picture from small bits and pieces of information, like the poor beetles, surrounded unknowingly by my trenches. All a beetle had to do to stay dry would be to climb up anything, even one of the little garden leaflets and try to get to higher ground. Running off in any direction would end up the same for the beetles unknowingly trapped on a suddenly created island. Any direction they chose to run in, would take them straight into the gushing flood created by my garden hose that ran around all of the little garden. How often I felt like one of those beetles - seeing a little danger in the economy in one direction, running in the other, and eventually finding that there was trouble all around!

Santa Rosa was my little island of unemployment, but every direction that I ran in, no matter where I sent my resume, no matter how many interviews I had - I always failed to cross the flood of other applicants and make it to the shore of a new job. Still, my little island had clients, and I had my own little company, so we hadn’t starved. I was praying for the perspective of the butterfly - I wanted to flutter high up over my current situation, and get the required perspective to apply for the right job at the right time.

Then there was church. We were new members of CLC, Christian Life Center, a church with about 3500 families. That’s a large church, and it was dynamic. Speakers came from all over the world every week, and sometimes more than one a week. Bible studies were every morning. I was a new Christian, and although it was easy to know that it was a top priority to provide for my family, it was not so easy to know what to do with the small amounts of money that we earned through my freelance programming efforts.

“Tithe a lot, get a lot” was a favorite slogan of the Assembly of God leadership. “Tithe a little, get a little” was another. The tithe was supposed to be 10%. But was that supposed to be 10% of the gross, or 10% of the net - before taxes or after taxes? Obviously, “Tithe a lot, get a lot” meant to give 10% of the gross. It was exciting and troubling at the same time to give 10% of the gross, which we had been doing for almost a year. Exciting, because we were giving all that we could. Troubling, because we were hoping that we weren’t doing it out of greed (to get a lot) but out of faithfulness, to be obedient to God. It was also troubling, because by now I was concerned that God’s definition of a ‘lot’ for us, was to continue living from contract to contract, with no health insurance, no savings, barely enough food, no new clothes (except hand-me-downs from those with better tithing techniques) and no security from one day to the next.

I was thankful that we hadn’t sunk - there had, after all, always been that next contract, just in time that kept us afloat. Our ’62 Lincoln, the 6 miles to the gallon wonder, would go to church on back with an empty tank, sometimes for weeks. I was afraid to try taking it anywhere else, though. Sometimes, when my faith would falter and I would find myself saying, “I just can’t chance taking that car out to church this weekend - it’s been bone dry for weeks now. It can’t possibly make it” - something would happen - like the time a complete stranger walking toward me on the sidewalk stopped, said “Wait - here, take this. I just feel the Lord wanted me to give you this for gas!” There it was. Five dollars. For gas. 15 gallons, almost enough to fill the tank. 90 miles, about two weeks worth of trips to church, and a few to the store. We would quickly go shopping first, while the gauge showed some gas in the tank. We would only drive to church with the gauge on empty. Don’t ask me why we did it. We just did. Somehow, it seemed like it was at least partly God’s business to keep our car going if we were driving it to church and back. A ‘shared burden’. Wouldn’t God partner with you on a goal like that? Going to the grocery store for goodies and sweets seemed to be an entirely different category. You couldn’t expect God to keep the engine running on nothing but faith (and maybe some burly angels, cranking away) for a trip to the grocery store, or a picnic!!

So, when my forehead hit the ottoman, there was always a lot to talk to God about. It varied from questions about the gas tank to how to raise our new baby, Daniel. My prayers always touched on long-term concepts, like what is the right way to view tithing? I always cringed inwardly from the “Give a lot, get a lot” implication - like investing in stocks, only you had a sure thing. That, I knew wasn’t right. But in faith, to give God what was His, where did you draw the line? It was all His, anyway!! So where did ‘common’ sense come in? How could you divide this little pile of beans for food, and this little pile of beans for God and others, and do it just right? (As you may have guessed, gas was often overlooked and forgotten as a topic of prayer - hence the continual surprise that the gas tank was near empty, or empty, or way past empty.)

Today I really wanted the perspective of the butterfly. I needed to see things from a distance. I was tired of reacting. I’d hear of a local business that might need a program written, and run off and give it my all to get the business. I’d fail, then get home to a phone call that a completely different client had heard that I did programming, and could I come in the next day to talk about it? It seemed I was always trying, always failing to do the right things, and that God was always having to step in to bail me out. I just wanted the self-sufficiency of that butterfly so badly!! To be able to go directly to the flower of my choice without swimming across all those gushing streams that upended me and put me down on the wrong shore was a desire that burned in me hotter and hotter!

So I would pray to be a butterfly and not a beetle. Metaphorically speaking, of course. If the change was to be permanent and physical, I would still take the fragile life of a butterfly that knows where it’s going over the life of a sturdy beetle that can’t see more than two centimeters in front of its antennae. I just wanted some wisdom. I wanted wisdom about getting money, giving money - how to organize my time, and how to ‘spend’ it. A client had demanded that I work on Sunday, and I had refused. Unfortunately, he was the head of the local Data Processing Manager’s Association, and I had been blackballed. Despite that setback, I still stumbled from contract to contract, just as before - but suspected that this might be part of why I could not be hired - so perhaps there was an escape clause in New Testament times for freelance programmers in a modern world - a way to work on Sunday without angering God.

Because I wouldn't work on Sunday, I had angered the DP Manager of the largest winery in the entire Sonoma County area - simultaneously closing the door on a large number of winery accounts, plus a random smattering of other accounts that I couldn’t even dream of. A butterfly would know whether or not it might have been OK to work on that particular Sunday, with all of its pressures on the DP Manager and myself. A butterfly would probably have flown over, landed on his shoulder, and asked him to talk about it - to see his side of things. As a beetle, I had simply dug into the ground and pulled a clod in over my head. I left him a note saying “I don’t work on Sundays” in response to his lengthy set of demands to be running by Monday. A phone call to his office the next day might have been nice. Instead, I stayed hidden under my clod, safe and sound, never dreaming that my shortsightedness would cause such a huge problem. A few weeks later I found out I had been blackballed. Fortunately, a newly promoted DB Manager didn’t know about this, and gave me my next contract. But it was all becoming confusing. While praying, I pounded my head on the ottoman a few times for emphasis, hoping God would feel the concussive blows of my concern, and respond more quickly.

“Go find Merle Bartel, and tell him that I want him to be the next head of FGBMFI (God actually said the “Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship”, which I will hereafter refer to as FGBMFI, because I used to work for IBM, and because it’s just too long a name to be repeated.) It was a very clear thought, kind of like tuning into a radio station with a clear signal - of course, it was a thought, so it was silent, even to me. But it was clear, it was emphatic, it was cheerful, it made me feel peaceful. I had come to recognize these as indicators that it really was God (or one of his angels) speaking when I felt so upbeat about while receiving a message.

Nonetheless, I had two problems with this direct request from God. One was, that I had been asking for perspective about my business, my finances and my gas tank. The other was that I didn’t even know who Merle Bartel was for sure. I knew I had heard his name at church, so that was another clue that the message was from God. The other was this little ‘tag’ that was invisible, but nonetheless was attached to the message and clearly said “URGENT” in big red, invisible letters. So, great! I had an urgent message to go find a guy that I didn’t know and tell him that he was supposed to head up an organization that he might not know!! I tried to remember if I had any gas. Then I decided it didn’t matter. I was driving for God.

Sure enough, the gas tank was empty. I tried turning the key on two or three times, hoping for a slight rise or fall of the needle. It just stayed flat, silently declaring “I’m resting on the bottom of a dry gas tank. Go away!”.

I turned the key all the way over, and the engine started up instantly. I had yelled to April as I rose from the Ottoman that I was going to church for awhile on urgent business, and that I would be back soon. “OK!” came back to me cheerily from the kitchen, where many things were being done that were mysterious mother things, a part of the ritual of feeding and caring for a tiny baby. At the front door, I had turned around, ran to the kitchen for a quick kiss and a hug. That filled up my tank, so I ran back to the car to face the inevitable, and hurry off to church.

CLC was still in its old building at this time, though the acreage for the new building had been purchased. The little church was far too small for 3500 families, even if they doled themselves out evenly over the many services on Sunday and throughout the week. I knew the office staff was there every day from about 8 to 6, so was confident that I would find somebody that could help me locate Merle Bartel - maybe I could get a phone number, or something. Anything but an address. I cast a skeptical look at my car, hoping I wouldn’t have to ask it to drive to Sebastopol or Petaluma to deliver this message.

As is often the case with beetles, I was wrong about what I was going to find. Although the doors to the church, and the office building were all open, a note neatly typed an taped to the office door said, “The Office is closed from 11AM to 2PM today in order to tour the new Church grounds. Please leave a note, and we will call you back. A pad and pencil lay on a desk next to the door, and a few notes had already been left. My one-liner said, “Leo Dauenhauer | 11:30AM | Looking for Merle Bartel. Please call 707-802-1964 | Urgent. |” It looked much like the others, all obediently filling in the appropriate data under each column in the space provided. I sighed a huge sigh of relief, that was taken care of, and started walking off to the car. Before my foot hit the ground, the thought “Tell Merle, now!” came to me. Apparently, I wasn’t going to get away with waiting for a return phone call. I glanced at my watch. It was almost 11:45. I stopped, just as a shadow fell on my watch. The shadow was caused by a gardener, or a volunteer hoeing some weeds. “Can I help you?” he said pleasantly. Where had this guy come from? The place was deserted when I drove up!

“Do you know where Merle Bartel is?” I asked. “He’s in a prayer meeting, in one of those classrooms over there” he said, pointing at a long, low building that doubled as Sunday school and Pre-school through Kindergarten for the church. “Do you know which one?” I asked. “That one with the window open, I expect” the man said, leaning over, and beginning to hoe. I hadn’t noticed any of the windows being open before. Now I heard the muted sound of men’s voices coming from that direction. I looked back to the Gardener to say “Thanks” but he had already moved around the building and was out of sight.

The sense of urgency grew in me until I broke into a half-trot, and galloped half-heartedly up to the outside door of the school. It would probably be locked, I thought. I’d probably have to shout at them through the window to let me in. The door swung open easily as I pushed on it, and I half-trotted down the hall to the door that seemed to be in the right place for the room with the window open. There I hesitated. Even though it was urgent, it didn’t seem polite to burst in. I knocked. Nothing happened, but again I heard the muted sound of men’s voices. I must have the wrong door. Impulsively, I pushed it open.

It appeared to be a library. Three men were seated around a large library table near the window, heads down, praying. They all stopped and looked up as I threw open the door. Nobody said anything. They just looked at me

“Does anybody here know Merle Bartel?” I asked. They all laughed, and the shortest man, slightly balding, at the end of the table asked “Why do you want to know?” It was more of an amused question than a challenge. A larger man, facing me from the other side of the table pointed at the man that had spoken, and said “That’s him”. The man in the center just sat, looking at me, with his mouth open.

“I looked at Merle and said, “You’re supposed to be the head of FGBMFI” (I used the long name for FGBMFI). “Why do you think that?” he asked slowly, eyebrows arched. I shrugged. They were all Christians, at least they’d been praying. I had to make this sense of urgency go away. I had to give the complete message.

“I was praying this morning, and just a few minutes ago God said that I should find Merle Bartel, and tell him that he should be the new head of FGBMFI. It was urgent. I got in my car, which happened to be empty of gas, drove here anyway, found the office locked up but a gardener told me where you were, and so here I am. If you’re Merle Bartel, you’re supposed to be the head of FGBMFI. That’s all I have to say.” I hadn’t even stepped inside the room. The short man, the one that was supposed to be Merle was now silent, and looking at the others. I needed to make sure. “You ARE Merle Bartel, right?” I asked, looking at him. He nodded. “And you know about the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship, right?” I asked this because although I had heard about it, I knew nothing about it, and thought maybe he was in the same boat. He nodded again, then he smiled.

“Well, I guess that settles it” he said to the other two. “Yes” the man in the middle said, after first closing his mouth. “I told you, Merle!” the large man on the right said. “OK, I’ll do it.” Merle said. “I don’t know where I’ll find the time. I still think Tom here is much more qualified than I am” he added, a bit weakly, looking at Tom, the man in the middle. I just stood there, considering this interesting exchange.

The large man laughed again and said, “My name’s Wayne Bass, this is Tom Christiansen (pointing to the man in the middle) and you have already met Merle Bartel.” I was starting to get a little red in the face. It was time for me to go. They were all smiling and laughing again. I didn’t mind being the butt of a joke. I had delivered my message. The sense of urgency was gone. “I’ll be going then, as long as this is Merle and he knows he’s supposed to be the head of FGBMFI” I said gruffly, turning to leave.

“Wait! Don’t leave! You don’t understand!!” Wayne said. He must have noticed my red face. “We’re laughing because we have been praying for over an hour for God to give us a sign about who should be the new head of FGBMFI. Tom here has been the leader, but feels it is his time to resign. Neither Merle nor I agreed with him, and we were both praying and trying to talk him into staying on until we could get some kind of a sign from God about what we should do. Now here you come in, and tell us God wants Merle to be the new head of FGBMFI, but you don’t know Merle, and you don’t know anything about FGBMFI. We were laughing with relief, because, if you think about it, that’s really a pretty good sign. Don’t you think?”

Wayne had a nice smile, and I liked him right away. I was a little relieved that they weren’t laughing at me, but I had become used to that in High School, so it wasn’t a big deal either way. I stood there with my hand on the door, about to say “Thanks” and leave.

“Would you like to stay and pray with us? We usually pray from 11:30 to 12:30, and it’s only about noon. Would you like part of my sandwich?” Wayne held up a delicious looking Corned Beef on Whole Wheat sandwich, and he offered me half of it. It looked like it might have Gray Poupon mustard, which I loved. “We usually have a snack about now. Want some coffee?” It was too tempting. I quickly stepped up to the empty chair by Wayne and sat down. My stomach growled with anticipation. I could smell the Gray Poupon. Everybody pulled a paper bag out from under the table. Merle said, “Let’s go ahead and eat early. We can pray later. While we’re eating, tell us a little about yourself. Where do you live? What do you do?”

We ate and talked for a few minutes, then prayed till 12:30. After that, nobody was in a hurry to leave, so we lingered for a few minutes more and just talked. By the time I left, I had been invited to be a part of their regular prayer group on Tuesday and Saturday mornings, and had agreed. It felt good to be part of a group. I wasn’t too surprised that, despite my flatlined gas gauge, the old Lincoln made it home without a hiccup. I had been on a mission for God.

By the time I got home, I realized that somehow with all the praying and talking, the fellowship and the hugs as we parted, that somewhere inside I felt a little more like a butterfly than a beetle. As Wayne, Tom, Merle and I had prayed together, I had started to see the world from a wider, higher perspective. They had mentioned some opportunities I had never thought of before. When they spoke of the Love of God, it didn’t seem conditional on tithing. I had a lot to think about as I drove home that day. After parking in the driveway, I stared at the gas gauge carefully while turning off the car. Sure enough, it was still on Empty, right where it had started, with no movement either way.

When I went in the house, April was rocking Daniel, and looked worried. “Where were you?” she asked. “I thought you said you’d be right back!” I cringed inside. I had forgotten to call her when I decided to stay and pray. I was definitely still part beetle!! I apologized and told her about my strange experience. April just smiled in a way that made me feel good all over. By the time I was done, Daniel was in his crib, and April was in my arms. Now I felt a little like a butterfly again. I was soaring high, all the problems far below me. I hoped I could get better at hanging on to the butterfly perspective and remembering priorities. Time would tell.

Our Daughter Ruth, Merle Bartel and our son Daniel-about 1978-9.

Goldibear

Monday, January 16, 2023

A Renewed Perspective - Butterfly or Beetle?

An Unexpected 'Answer' to Prayer

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