“A magician was working on a cruise ship in the Caribbean and, because the audience would be different each week, he allowed himself to do the same trick over and over again. There was only one problem – the Captain’s parrot saw the shows each week and began to work out how the magician did every trick. Once he realised how each was done, he would shout out in the middle of the show:’ Look, it’s not the same hat’, ‘He’s got another bunch of flowers under the table,’ ‘Why, all the cards are the ace of spades!’ The magician was furious, but could do nothing because the bird belonged to the Captain. Then, one day, the ship had an accident and sank. The magician found himself on a piece of wood in the middle of the ocean, with the parrot. Thy stared at each with hate, but neither uttered a word. This went on day after day. After a week the parrot said: ‘Ok I give up. Where’s the boat’?
There are times when we want things, circumstances or people to disappear. Thinking God is a magician we pray and ask him if he will oblige. ‘Lord, help me not to meet this person,’ or, ‘Lord, deliver me from this situation,’ and, ‘Lord, make that trouble disappear.’ If we had our way God would be the God of the vanishing trick.
The magicians we saw as children used slight-of-hand. We thought we saw what we saw and thought we didn’t see what we didn’t see, but it was all so confusing that we were not sure at the end whether we saw anything at all. However, be assured that there are adversities in life that are definitely real, it’s not that we think we experience them, we do, of that there is no doubt. Our only problem is, ‘who’s going to make them go away?’ Sometimes God does remove them sometimes he doesn’t. However, as a divine magician (in the right sense) God does cause our sins to disappear, and we can never find them again, they are gone forever (Psalm 103:12).
It’s good that God doesn’t answer every prayer, for His inaction in the long term can be good for us and good for His divine plan. My prayer was ‘God, never send me to London,’ he just ignored it. ‘Lord, don’t let me work with that kind of man, it causes me stress,’ He ignored it – again! I can imagine Joseph praying in the pit (Genesis 37:28), ‘Please Lord, make those Midianites go away.’ God didn’t, instead He let things transpire and arranged circumstances within the divine economy, filling in his job application for second executive ruler of Egypt.
The biggest problem we have is usually with people – ‘No Lord, not that one, I’ll work with anyone, but not that one. They’re the limit!’ God just smiles and jacks up our tolerance level, refining us as He goes. Magicians usually make rabbits appear and disappear out of hats with impunity, but the people we know seem to be permanent fixtures. In desperation we pray for bigger hats. Mary Poppins, as she says goodbye to her two charges, puts all her goods into her bag on the table. ‘Impossible’ you say, as she puts a coat stand (a full five feet tall) into her shallow carpetbag. It happens in films but not in real life, although we wish it would.
Why not be your own magician? Look what Christ said: “For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, `Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ (disappear) and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will come to pass, he will have whatever he says.” (Mark 11:23).
