Read: Hebrews 5:5-10

“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his godly fear.” – Hebrews 5:7

Being a night owl, I find myself needing a snack around midnight to fall asleep, and I usually end up reading a book while I eat as a reward for getting through the day to that point. I am currently reading the Discworld series by Sir Terry Pratchett to try and enhance my geek cred, and I finished the book, Small Gods, last night. In it, Pratchett satirizes religion in general, creating this fictitious city called Omnia which worships the Great God Om in various forms and has an elaborate hierarchy and a “Quisition” to punish people who commit faith transgressions. The irony is that people are practicing the religion but not actually *believing* in it, so Om, in reality, is in the form of a tortoise in most of the book due to the lack of true believers. One of the things we learn about the elaborate pantheons of deities on the Discworld is that gods/goddesses depend on believers as a fuel of sorts. Omnia has this underground cult of belief in the world not being a sphere circling a sun, but instead, a disc balanced on the back of a giant turtle named Great A’Tuin who is swimming through space, which is how things actually are, and this causes members of this underground movement to run afoul of the Quisition. As a persecuted minority, the way they gain entry into these secret meetings is the passphrase “the turtle moves.”

As I was lying in bed finishing the book at a somewhat ungodly hour, this week’s epistle reading popped into my head, and I started pondering how it fits into the ideas in the book. Verse 7 tells us that “Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears” and that would probably mark him as an actual believer versus someone who is just practicing the faith in the way of most Omnians in the book. As Christians, we believe that God hears our prayers, and our prayer is actual conversation with God instead of just something we do because we probably should. That we can have these conversations with God through prayer gives me hope because I need to know that the One to whom I am crying out in fear, anger, or joy actually hears me and cares about what I am saying.

Thank you, God, that you hear us and desire a relationship with us. Amen.
-Jen McCabe