I glided into the mouth of the machine as the slab I was on was swallowed into a long tube like the hole in a seven-foot thick donut. When it stopped, I opened my eyes and saw the curved ceiling a few inches above me. In the long pre-text questionnaire I’d filled out, I checked “no” next to: “Are you claustrophobic?” Now I was not so sure. I don’t usually have nightmares but when I do, I am often being buried alive in a casket, futilely screaming for help. Entombed in the MRI machine, it felt like a dream come true.

The small saving grace was the voice of the technician came through the earphones he’d placed on me saying, “Are you OK?” “Fine,” I answered, when, of course, I was not. For the next 30 minutes, I heard nothing but the sounds of the machine at work, like loud techno-pop music blasting out an electronic beat.

I fought the anxiety that made me want to call out, “Get me out of here!!” I focused on my breathing. I went through the books of the Bible (not too helpful). I prayed for each of my children. As my mind searched for a focal point, it came to me what I’d said just a few hours earlier.

I’d had an interview with Susie Larson on her radio show Live the Promise about my new book Paradox Lost: Rediscovering the Mystery of God. (If you like, you can listen to the interview here.) Susie quickly zeroed in on one of the key themes of my book, namely that desiring to have all the answers about our spiritual lives diminishes both us, and most especially, God. I spoke about how we all desire control over our lives. We easily deceive ourselves into thinking we will gain control if only we try harder to be more spiritual, or follow the proper 5-step plans or master the correct formulas.

“But,” I said, “gaining control is an illusion. We are never in control. Exploring the mystery of God helps us see how much larger God is and yet, paradoxically, helps us trust a God whom we can never control.”

Now my words came back to haunt me. I felt supremely out of control. I struggled not to shout to the attendant to get me out because I could not stand another second inside that machine. Did I really believe what I’d so blithely said in the interview?

Our staff meeting devotion the previous week was the scripture of Jonah spending three days and nights in the belly of the whale—one of the Bible’s great examples of out-of-control confinement. In Eugene Peterson’s great book on Jonah, he suggests his confinement forces Jonah to recognize that God is in control and that Jonah’s running away from God has accomplished nothing. Peterson writes:

“While everyone has a hunger for God, deep and insatiable, none of us has any great desire for him. What we really want is to be our own gods, and to have whatever other gods that are around to help us in this work.” Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness (p. 84-85)

It’s the confining places of life—in the belly of the MRI machine is an existential physical experience—that show us how much we want to be our own gods and be in control.

The technician’s voice interrupted my thoughts, “Just 5 more minutes and you’re done.” Having lost all sense of time, I can’t tell you how welcome his voice was to me!

In the final 5 minutes, I thought of Susie Larson’s comment during our interview that often we go through repeated cycles of “problem…prayer…resolution” without being changed ourselves in the process. In other words, we want God to solve our problems, but when they are resolved, we put God on the shelf until the next problem comes along.

As my slab began whirring to pull me out of the jaws of the MRI machine, I told myself I needed to remember what I’d rediscovered there about my need to be in control.

Question: When or how have you been out of control? What did you learn, about yourself or God? Please share your thoughts in a comment.

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