But If Not by Maurine Proctor

Maurine Proctor’s column appears every Tuesday on Meridian. To sign up for free emails, Click Here
I do not know by degrees the temperature of a “burning, fiery furnace” in ancient Babylon, but it was hot enough to melt flesh, the nerve endings cooked in anguishing cries. It was searing enough that the guards, themselves, who were to throw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego into that “exceedingly hot” furnace were consumed like paper.
One might say Nebuchadnezzar knew how to get his way—and what he wanted was to have the entire kingdom fall down in servile worship to a giant, golden image when they heard certain music.
Our three young Hebrews, in bondage in Babylon enraged the despot because they wouldn’t comply, and Nebuchadnezzar threatened, “If ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace, and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?” (Daniel 3:15).
Their reply is simply stunning: “If it so be, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, but if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up” (Daniel 3:18).
“But if not”-- these are words that ring across the millennia to us. Saved and spared, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego loved the Lord, “but if not” their devotion and adoration for Him was undiminished.
This story has a happy ending. They, of course, were spared and Nebuchadnezzar was astonished to see not just the three men walking in the midst of the fire, but also “the form of the fourth [was] like the Son of God” (Daniel 3:25). The Savior, Himself, was with them in the flame.
Not all stories of believers have such immediate deliverance, however. Abraham was spared on the altar of sacrifice in the land of the Chaldeans, but the three virgins of Onitah were sacrificed “because of their virtue; they would not bow down to worship gods of wood or of stone” (Abraham 1:11) The believers in Ammonihah were rounded up and also burned in agonizing death, destroyed along with their scriptures.
When Amulek saw the anguish of the people as they were being consumed, he asked Alma, “How can we witness this awful scene?” (Alma 14:10). We wonder were his wife and children in that fire? His friends?
Unlike Nebuchadnezzar who was proved so marvelously wrong, things were made markedly harder for Alma and Amulek because the chief judge and author of this fire felt vindicated, justified, taunting them and smiting them on the cheek: “After what ye have seen, will ye preach again unto this people, that they shall be cast into a lake of fire and brimstone?” (Alma 14:14).
We are cast into fires of various sorts in our lives. Sometimes life itself is a long exercise in the fire. It is so tempting to have our love of God be conditional, dependent on His delivery of us from our difficulties. Some fires burn hotter than others, and some we can hardly endure. Certainly there are times when we are pleading for rescue, and it doesn’t seem to come, or it comes at what seems a glacial pace.
Unconsciously we may try to strike what we think is a sort of bargain with the Lord. We say to Him, “You’ve asked for my whole heart? I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you a piece--with these conditions—that you rescue me immediately, make my rocky path smooth, and ease my way.”
How many times do we give up praying with real intent because the answers don’t seem readily forthcoming? Or because the sickness still lingers or the economic privation continues? Or the burden we carried yesterday does not really seem lighter today?
We may still go through the motions of worship, but inside we know we aren’t submitting our broken heart and contrite spirits. We are still testing how this use of our time works, doing a cost-analysis on whether devotion pays off, trying to negotiate a contract on our terms.
The tiny piece of our heart we give in this way, is like putting a coin in a gumball machine and then being mad when the goods don’t immediately arrive. “This thing just doesn’t work,” we say with a kick toward the machine.
Or is it expecting God to be our servant, instead of our humbling ourselves and asking Him how we can be His?
To bind ourselves to God with such a thin thread is a fundamental misunderstanding of this relationship, choosing to walk in circles in the spiritual lowlands instead of climbing to the mountain top where the vistas are breath taking and the air is warm, loving him only when he demands little of us and delivers the good times.
“But if not” are words of spiritual empowerment and discovery. Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, who could say with fervor and confidence, and without inner cringing that “our God” was capable of sparing them from the fire, but if not they loved Him all the same, knew something of God’s love and greatness that gives us a hint of what’s possible.
Loved Him still? Loved Him in the fire? Loved him with total submission whatever may come? Yes. This is the majesty of the truly spiritually mature and faithful.
The hesitant, the bargaining, those who must constantly take their spiritual temperature to see if this journey to know God is worth it, however tough it may sometimes be, may wonder why, when they give a fraction of their heart, they only get a fraction of the spiritual power
Even if He promised no earthly help, just coming to know God is a sweetness that is beyond delicious. Coming to trust Him, His purposes and what He is doing with our lives fulfils a yearning that nothing else on this earth can satisfy.
Sometimes our promised blessings are deferred, held for their proper time as the Lord knows it in His omniscience. When we have tasted of His Spirit and have felt His touch, this we can survive with grace and patience.
The great men and women whose stories are dear to us from scripture demonstrate this. How long the wait must have been for Sarah before Isaac was born, yet she held on in faith, nor charged God foolishly, even after her time for conception had passed “because she judged him faithful who had promised” (Hebrews 11:11). The key is here. She knew God.
She didn’t just say she knew God or give mere lip service to it. She knew Him from her own private experiences. Nothing else would have fortified her.
Abraham was promised a land, an inheritance, but “sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country” (Hebrews 11:9). Tried, he wandered, and finally had to purchase a piece of land in someone else’s field to bury his wife. Isaac saw his sons quarrel, despaired over Esau’s marriage out of the covenant. Jacob spent a lifetime thinking his birthright son had been torn asunder by a beast, only to be reunited with him when he was too blind to see.
Still we hear this: “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13).
I lay in bed, one recent morning, long before the sun was up, musing on these things. Much concerns me of late, heavy things, things I wish the Lord would sweep away like I sweep dust off the table. He could do it if he chose. I have seen him lift my burdens, or at least ease them, many times before. I have felt him heal my troubled heart, but I have also felt times when blessings I considered beyond necessary did not appear to come for reasons I didn’t clearly understand.
I was wondering in the stillness of that morning, how I would feel if this were one of those times, and for awhile I talked with him about it. A scene from Shadowlands came to mind. This is the story of C.S. Lewis, the great Christian writer who was a don at Oxford. In the scene, a friend asks him about his prayers. It goes like this:
Harry: Christopher can scoff, Jack, but I know how hard you’ve been praying and now God is answering your prayers.
C.S. Lewis: That’s not why I pray, Harry. I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God, it changes me.
I realized that the need flows out of me, too, waking and sleeping. I thought about all of my years of talking to God, wrestling for the things I felt I needed for myself and for the ones I love, pleading also that he would help me be transformed. What had come of this? A slow dawning, a sturdy light.
I need to write this for myself. It is an affirmation. Whether he takes my current burdens or not, whether he waits to ease them, I love him. All of the yearnings of my soul are drawn out to him. I adore what he is, not just what he does for me in my pleadings.
I love him. If there is beauty that delights my senses, it is because he is Creator, his mind so luminous and imaginative, so full of joy that it spills out from all he authors in infinite variety.
I love him. If there is light that pierces through me, that expands my mind and soaks the cells with hope, it is his, the light which flows from his bosom and fills the immensity of space.
If there is love and tenderness in this world of indifference and brutality, it is because we have caught a portion of his Spirit. If there is hope, it is because he offers it through his atonement, a gift without price, and surely enough that I need no other.
I rejoice in being forgiven, of taking my littleness to him and have him do his work of expansion.
I can scarce take it in that in a universe of a 100 billion galaxies, that he is interested in me, but I know that’s true. I can feel it. I don’t know how that can be, but I can feel that his interest and concern penetrates to my level. I can tap into it.
Oh, how I admire his excellence, his intelligence, and how certain I am that the sweetest moments I have known in this life are when his Spirit has descended upon me. Nothing else is so good. Nothing else so delectable.
Oh, how I love to count on him in a world of commotion, he, who does not change, who describes himself as first person existence: I AM.
I don’t know if I could be thrown into a “burning, fiery furnace” with the majesty of calm of the three Hebrews in Babylon, but for today, I want to make a promise to this One I love, that in my little furnace, should the flames be hot, I will love thee still.