Do you remember Gracie Allen, the scatterbrained wife in a comedy team with her husband George Burns? On one occasion, Gracie called in a repairman to fix her electric clock. The repairman fiddled with it and then said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with the clock, lady; you didn’t have it plugged in.’ Gracie replied, ‘Well, I don’t want to waste electricity, so I only plug it in when I want to know what time it is.’
That reminds me of those of us who have a kind of faith in God but don’t really live it, saving it for when we might suddenly need a bit of Divine assistance. We go through life unplugged from the source of life and wonder why our lives are so empty of meaning. Like Gracie Allen, it would be funny if it weren’t so sad, because faith is more than something to be plugged in when things go wrong.