I am the Lord…

It’s been very  cold in the mornings. Today before the sun was fully awake, the thermometer on the deck read -8 degrees. That’s cold! But the scenery is an exquisite  study in white  on black. Snow blankets   every shrub and bush  like errant   clouds caught in the branches.  At the house,  snow is piled up to almost the window sill.

Every morning   I sit at my dining table looking for God’s surprises and am never disappointed.  Icicles curve inward into long fingers  around the upper windows. Frost crystals decorate the glass panes. A nuthatch pecks at pine cones looking for seeds. My dwarf lilac tree bends over under the weight of the snow, white mounds on the bare branches. I am reminded of Japan.

While in Kyoto last October we visited several Buddhist and Shinto shrines. The city is reputed to have over 10,000 prayer shrines scattered throughout the  city and on the mountains. The Shinto shrines are identifiable by their colossal red Tori gates which symbolize and demarcate the profane from the spiritual realms. One of the shrines we visited was the Fushimi-Inari Shrine which is dedicated to the rice god and its protector fox. People come to the shrines to pray for all kinds of favor from the gods, for health, wealth, and especially good fortune. They ritually wash their hands, light candles, burn incense and pray  in front of the  temple . Sometimes they  ring a massive gong which is said to send the prayer in the direction of the hovering gods.  I watched as many people wrote prayers on strips of paper which were then hung on wooden cross bars near the temples.

Later at another shrine I saw small trees covered with what might have been thousands of paper prayers. Several workers were taking the papers down and burning them – so that the trees could be filled up again and again, months and years into the future.

Then I thought,  “To whom or to what are these people praying?” The answer is – No one. Shintoism is  animistic, believing that spirits – and demons- reside in trees or animals or crops or water. It does not  believe in an after life, but in destiny and rebirth until one’s karma is satisfied. There is no one true God. There is no Whom.

There is no cross of atonement. There is no  God of mercy and grace nor Holy Spirit of truth, comfort and wisdom. There is no Savior to redeem their lives. The Shinto religion is manifested in rituals without any resolutions. It is completely one-sided based on what one does and practices.

…The idols of the nations are but silver and gold, The work of man’s hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak; They have eyes, but they do not see; They have ears, but they do not hear, Nor is there any breath at all in their mouths.… Psalm 135:15-17

No rice deity or fox god can answer prayers for they are inanimate idols who cannot hear or speak to answer prayers.   Then, sadly every paper prayer is as ephemeral as snow in my lilac tree. The only solace is found by practitioners in the endless cycle of offerings to deaf and mute idols.

My heart broke thinking about an entire people offering  paper prayers that go now where except eventually into a burn pile.  They don’t  know there is a  path  far better  than pilgrimages past fox statues positioned along the red Tori gates –  the Way of Jesus.  He alone offers  Himself as answer to the heart’s deepest longings.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me – especially  when  I am among a multitude  who don’t have Christ. It is by God’s grace alone I have been called differently.

What of us? Do we perhaps also offer paper prayers to our God?   Are our prayers as worthless as paper strips because  we rely on what we do rather than relying on the One who is listening? Prayers not based on  God’s will and faith in Christ  vaporize into nothingness.  Are there  some Tori gates built up in our secret prayer closets that need to be taken down  so we can   “seek, ask and knock” on God’s throne instead? It may be time to ferret out  hidden idols and ask the Holy spirit to reveal  religious practices we bow down to even as we pray .   God made very clear to Moses what He expected of man. It was a commandment written in stone, not on a paper strip.

I am Yahweh your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God… . Exodus 20:2-6