… To pray for her soul, that is.

It’s not uncommon for Hollywood to shock me, but this shock was one I was not prepared for, and much too close to home.  Really?  Really!?  In the movie Gravity, Dr. Ryan Stone is stuck in orbit with no propulsion available, and facing slow but certain death from oxygen starvation, but when confronted with her imminent death, she fails to grasp for whatever spiritual handhold she can find.  That’s just bad writing.  The fear of death is something that every mortal innately understands.  Dr. Stone certainly spends enough time in the movie grasping for physical handholds, and sensibly so.

But there she is, realizing that she’s going to die, with no one to mourn for her, no one to pray for her soul, and never having been taught how to pray for herself:  “No one ever taught me how,” she says.

Warner Bros., 2013

The thing is, even though Ryan Stone is just a movie character, if she doesn’t know how to pray, it apparently means that her writers don’t know how to pray.  And that fault is mine and that of my fellow Christians.  It means we haven’t told people where to find unfailing salvation.  For anybody reading this who 1) isn’t a web crawler, and 2) hasn’t already prayed for their soul, you really need to get this truth.  The most basic prayer you need is:

Jesus, help!

You might think God wouldn’t listen to you, or can’t be bothered, or wouldn’t be willing to help, but that is the very opposite of his nature.  Not only is this a theologically solid prayer, but it’s one that God straight up tells us he hears:

And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.  (Acts 2:21, also Romans 10:13)

Even non-Christians are aware of the power of Jesus’ name.  There are many, many stories of people around the world from diverse cultures and religions who have called out to Jesus when facing certain death, and have been miraculously saved.  That shouldn’t come as a surprise, since the very name Jesus means “The Lord is Salvation” or “He Saves.”  Many of these people subsequently became Christians because of what God did for them.

Yes, I know it’s popular in America these days to ridicule that belief, but I’ll take the ridicule if it helps people hear the truth.  And no, this is not a credulous, uneducated, moronic, frightened, grasping at straws on my part—it’s a truth as rock-solid as the God who made the universe.

This is just a starting point, but if you didn’t know even this much, start here.