Coda

WHAT SHALL I DO WITH MY NEWFOUND PEN OF LIGHT?

In late 2016 I travelled to northern California to meet a friend and business
associate. We spent an evening together thinking and talking. At one point he
took a pen from his jacket and took a few notes. It was LED-equipped and
beamed light out its tip, so that writing in the dark was made easier. “Just
another gadget,” I thought. Later, however, in a more metaphorical frame of
mind, I was struck quite deeply by the idea of a pen of light. There was
something symbolic about it, something metaphysical. We’re all in the dark,
after all, much of the time. We could all use something written with light to
guide us along our way. I told him I wanted to do some writing, while we sat
and conversed, and I asked him if he would give me the pen, as a gift. When
he handed it over, I found myself inordinately pleased. Now I could write
illuminated words in the darkness! Obviously, it was important to do such a
thing properly. So I said to myself, in all seriousness, “What shall I do with
my newfound pen of light?” There are two verses in the New Testament that
pertain to such things. I’ve thought about them a lot:

Ask, and it shall given to you; Seek, and ye shall find; Knock, and it shall be open unto you:

For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the

door will be opened (Matthew 7:7-7:8)

At first glance, this seems like nothing but a testament to the magic of prayer,
in the sense of entreating God to grant favours. But God, whatever or
whoever He may be, is no simple granter of wishes. When tempted by the
Devil himself, in the desert—as we saw in Rule 7 (Pursue what is meaningful
[not what is expedient])—even Christ Himself was not willing to call upon
his Father for a favour; furthermore, every day, the prayers of desperate
people go unanswered. But maybe this is because the questions they contain
are not phrased in the proper manner. Perhaps it’s not reasonable to ask God
to break the rules of physics every time we fall by the wayside or make a
serious error. Perhaps, in such times, you can’t put the cart before the horse