Prayer for Today

My spirit is full, pleasantly satiated at this moment.  I find it curious that God remains hidden but yet is infused in it all. Less Himself and more Other-self.

The comfort of a relaxing shower and a favorite shirt, authentic conversation with a dear friend over a delicious cup of tea, an impromptu encounter with a sponsee and a meeting with beautiful women and warm hugs where truth is spoken and a new life practiced, shopping for delights both for creativity and physical sustenance...

An old sing-song prayer comes to mind: 

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heav’nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

All goodness comes from Him. All sweetness comes from Him. All gifts of nourishment for body and spirit come from Him. He is present with me because He is life to me.

And then the whispers...all trials? All tribulations? I hesitate, not wanting to be blind but not able to dismiss the pain-or the grace. I look up where billowing silver clouds sail in front of a yellow and gray winter sky and am aware of how little of the world, and the greater story of humanity, that I know. God, author of this story, the Creator and the Finisher, probably has a very different perspective.  (These silly whispers, always trying to derail me.) But, yes, I believe trials can be good gifts from Him. I have witnessed it in my life. 

A glimpse of blue between clouds, the joyful greeting of the pups, preparing a warm meal for my husband, the fragrance of goulash filling the house, listening to a book being read with rhythmic diction as I crochet, my phone vibrating alerts of messages from friends...

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heav’nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Amen.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Carnival: Community

Image
Blog Carnival: Community Community is getting to be a buzzword that hardly seems recognizable.  It has become permanently connected with a metrosexual worship leader at the hip church which has an outreach into some impoverished place.  But is that community? Yesterday I wrote about Facebook's social networking site.  Did you know that there are more than 300 million active users and that 50% of their active users (returned to the site in the last 30 days) log on to Facebook in any given day and that the average user has 130 friends on the site? Is that community? Do we really have a community or do we talk so much about it and request friends by the busload because we desire it intensely? We were made for community.  Creator said it was not good for that first man to be alone.  Even Creator was not alone.  We need to walk with others.  We need our village.  We need them to not only walk with us a...
Read more

He's Calling

Image
I didn't sleep well last night. I kept waking up, wanting to write. Those nights are annoying, particularly when I am working 12 hours the next day so I have no business getting out of bed to write. But here is the thing that kept bugging me...what if God is calling us not to greatness, but to smallness? Yeah, weird thing to keep a person awake, huh? Our group that went to the Leadership Summit are praying for ways that we can put what we learned into practice. Look around your neighborhood-there is so much need. Look around your coworkers-enough need to depress you. Look around the world-so much need it can paralyze. And then I think about this thing with callings... What if it isn't about being called to a thing, but to be like Him? What if it doesn't matter where I am or what I do but how I do it? What if His only desire is for me to respond to this broken world as He does? Right where I am? Jesus stopped to love the kids, he held up important people to talk to a woman, ...
Read more

The Reason for the Season

Image
This post is participating in today's blog carnival on the word LOVE.  To read other posts, click here . As all my friends texted holiday wishes this Christmas, one stood out.  This one seemed to go against all the "Keep Christ in Christmas" and "Jesus is the reason for the season" bumper stickers.  This text said simply, U r the reason 4 the season. At first I thought she wrote it incorrectly, so I read it again looking for the typo.  But, there wasn't one. That's when it hit me: without me, there wouldn't be a need for Christmas. Ok, so that sounds somewhat egocentric, but hang in there with me.  God is this crazy amazing being made of love.  It is out of that crazy, amazing love that he chose to step into flesh, to show us that God does love us and that he didn't abandon us to the evil that surrounds us, to bring us back to this relationship.  God, the first and greatest lover, pursues us, rescues us.  O...
Read more