It’s nearly hot enough outside to roast marshmallows without a fire, but I, nevertheless, recently found myself thinking of the holiday movie, “A Christmas Story.”
For those of you not familiar with this classic film, “A Christmas Story” is about a boy named Ralphie and his hilarious, obsessive quest to get a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. In one scene, Ralphie finally gets a chance to communicate his wish to a department-store Santa. After waiting…and waiting…and waiting in the long line, Ralphie’s big moment finally arrives. He’s hoisted up onto Santa’s lap and at last, he has the ear of the one he thinks can make his dream come true.
But Ralphie freezes. As the cranky elves yell at him to hurry up and Santa loudly “ho, ho, ho’s” in his face, Ralphie’s mind goes blank. An impatient Santa foists a lame wish for a football on him and the poor boy caves under the pressure. Before Ralphie can gather his wits, a sinister elf launches him down a long slide that leads from Santa’s throne.
I was thinking about this movie scene recently as I drove home from a doctor’s office. Why? Maybe you can guess.
Maybe you, like me, have waited… and waited…and waited to talk with a doctor about something that’s really important to you. Your body’s going nuts and it affects your life every day.
You have questions you want to ask the doctor. Questions that matter to you. Questions you didn’t write down because they’ve been sitting right there on the front row of your brain every day as you’ve waited for this appointment.
You arrive at the doctor’s office and after growing roots in at least two waiting rooms, it’s finally your turn. The doctor appears. He asks how you’re doing. It’s your big chance.
And you turn into Ralphie. Your mental hard drive crashes. That’s what happened to me.
When the doctor came in, my brain turned to mush and I could recall only a fraction of the wonderfully coherent, relevant questions I wanted to ask him. I felt the clock ticking and I scrambled to reboot my brain, but it was no use.
In the movie, Ralphie stops himself about halfway down the exit slide and manages to climb back up to the top, where he quickly blurts out his desperate wish for a BB gun.
But I knew when that doctor shoved me down the slide in his office, there was no climbing back up. He was gone, off to make another bundle of bucks down the hall. Any further questions would surely be directed to one of his elves.
It occurred to me that some folks probably feel that way when they talk to God. They don’t consider themselves to be on especially good terms with Him, so on those rare occasions when they muster up the “oomph” to pray, they feel enormously intimidated — like they better say things “right” or at least hurry up with it, or He’ll shove them down the slide.
Oh, if we could only grasp how much God loves us and longs for us to honestly and frequently talk to Him!
We’re not on the clock, not on the witness stand, not sitting on a grouchy Santa’s lap, not trying to talk to a doctor who has five other patients waiting for him.
We can take a deep breath and relax – God has all the time in the world, we have all His attention, and He wants nothing more than for us to pour out our hearts to Him. All our hearts, all the time.
“Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us.” – Psalm 62:8.