Category: Devotions

I  realize how selfish some of my prayers have been. Today while reading my devotionals this line came across my heart. “I thank thee that many of my prayers have been refused- I have asked amiss and do not have, I have prayed from lusts and been rejected, I have longed for Egypt and been given a wilderness.”

It was as if a light went on in the middle of the night. This past year has been a struggle to step up to a different level of prayer. I have lots of prayer journals I have done and different ways I have tried to apply prayer to my life. What I have been convicted about this past year is that I ask too much. My prayers are more about supplications than they are about confession and adoration. I get thanks down pretty good. I am very thankful but I realize I am also very greedy. And it’s not always about me- in fact it’s seldom about me. That has always made me feel better about asking God to heal everyone else and meet their needs. However, my focus this year has been a quest for the time I spend simply with God and listening to what He is telling me rather than what I am telling Him. I realize that I am longing for Egypt and find myself in a wilderness and I don’t like it.

This prompted me to refocus my prayer life on Who God is, What He does and How He feels about me long before I start filling the blanks on my page. Egypt is such a beautiful place. The wilderness is barren. But it doesn’t have to be that way if I see it as the beautiful not the barren. Jesus went off in the wilderness to pray. There must have been something about the wilderness that connected Jesus to God in a special way. Moses and the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for many years. I wonder if any of them saw the beauty or did they just see the driftwood and sand dunes.

I am not longing specifically for the wilderness nor have I given up on the Egypt that is in my heart but I am seeing the beauty in the Wilderness and understanding Egypt isn’t ready for me yet. The prayer (taken from the Valley of Vision Prayer Book) also has this line.
“Go on with thy patient work, answering ‘no’ to my wrongful prayers, and fitting me to accept it.”

I think Egypt is the cats meow. God apparently thinks the wilderness is a lesson I need to pass before I reach Egypt. Especially now with the changes in our world, we all want to go back to the Egypts in our hearts.  We want our Egypt- to be with loved ones, go where we want and do what we are used to. For now, we are in a wilderness.  And there is beauty if we look for it!

I couldn’t sleep. That’s not abnormal for me especially since the person I married has become a tuba player. No, he hasn’t taken up music, just the competition called snoring. And he wins. I go into the guest room. Tonight, very moved by two Good Friday services, I couldn’t sleep. So, I to the guest room I went and began to think. Then I looked up. It’s a beautiful plaque. Simply says, live well, laugh often, love much, and it’s crooked.

It feels like life. Life feels crooked. I could get on the chair and straighten it. There is no chair in this room I could stand on. It will have to be crooked until tomorrow. Yet as long as I snuggle in the bed and look up, I will see it. I will be reminded it’s crooked. And yet, the best option I have is to wait until tomorrow and then straighten it. That means I must wait.

It’s Good Friday. Jesus could have just popped back up and said, “I’m back”, but he made the people wait until Sunday. There are good things to waiting, however right now, we can’t see them. We are in a waiting, mourning pattern. It’s awkward and is crooked. It’s also something we have no control over. There are times life will jut be crooked. There will be waiting days. We tend to rush to celebrations. In the Bible, many times God chose to let the pain walk. One of the Good Friday services emphasized, don’t rush past the cross to get to the light. Good Friday is a time to mourn and lament. Many of the psalms, especially the one Jesus began to quote on the cross Psalm 22 , was a lament. You don’t get over death, you adjust. Take this time before Sunday to adjust. And until the resurrection changes our life, we lament.

A friend reminded awhile back while stressing over a social need that I didn’t need to try to be anyone else but myself. Ridiculous- I am over 60 and still having to be reminded that it’s ok to be who I am. It’s our natural heart desire to be liked. We want to be lived and accepted, and then loved and embraced. For the most part, we gravitate to people who let us be ourselves and we move toward friendships in a natural way. Then there are those exceptions. I can count a few that still bother me. Why? Because I think that them liking me will make a difference in me. I found this saying several years ago and it popped up on my Facebook today. It’s a wonderful reminder.

In the past three years I have had to come to grips with those who held the cup of tea where the handle is turned away from me. When you serve tea, you purposefully turn the handle so the person taking the tea is set to lift her cup. When people spurn our hearts, they keep the handle toward themselves. It’s a huge hint but we don’t always take the hint. We try to turn the handle so we can grab the tea cup. If they wanted to be our friend, the handle would be facing us ready for us to grasp. It’s a hard thing when someone doesn’t like you. It’s even harder when they are a Christian brother or sister. I need to be reminded that even in the Bible we have Christian examples who didn’t always see eye to eye. It’s better to switch tables and pick up a tea cup with the handle toward you than make a scene trying to get someone to give you the respect of your cup.  I don’t understand but I accept. I pray for those who don’t want my friendship but I can’t let it become a boulder blocking my beautiful garden walkway. And as much as it is within me, let me live at peace. And sometimes that means walking away and know that I am loved by my people. And my people love me very much. Now more than ever,  I just wish I could hug them!!!!

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It came out with my Bible this morning. It, being my planner. It’s a beautiful planner. Not the kind some get but beautiful just the same. I remember school before we had planners. We just write in a three subject notebook if one was so lucky to have a three subject. Somehow our mother only bought us the one subject themes narrow college ruled notebook. College found me learning about planners. And then life happened. Children bring planners into a whole new realm. School, lessons, sports, church, and work brought planners to a need level. One needed to have an order or structure to life and the planner was a perfect fit. Eventually I replaced my big planner with a prayer book, calendar and time organizer for the fridge.

What good does a planner do if one can’t plan. I looked at my planner and I was already not doing what I planned. Life changes, changes planning. Life changes plans. Instead of being in Kansas today doing a concert, instead of my sons fiancée having a wedding shower, instead of baseball on the radio, the plans have been changed. How do you react when plans change? For some of us, we get out our planners and scribble all over the page, cancelled. For others, we get different ink out and reword and change the plan so we have something on the page to reflect the truth of the moment, and others, rather ignore the planner all together and just roll with the changes. What each one of us must succumb to is our planners plan, no longer is our plan. We love the verse Jeremiah 29:11 about God knowing the plans for us to prosper. We quote it, hang it on the wall and memorize it. What we forget is the verse before it reminds us that there are 70 years to be completed. We want to be in the prospering part of our planner sometimes before the 70 years of Babylon are up. The one thing I can guarantee about our lock down, quarantine and virus of 2020 is this too will change. It might however be a longer time in Babylon before we prosper. What matters is how we handle our planner during the time in Babylon. Dramatically throwing the planner, scribbling it, venting on Facebook or screaming at God that it’s not fair that we can’t do what we want to do is losing our Babylon character building time. The Babylon’s in our life are not what we want, but they will show others who God is and will allow God to mold us, teach us and remind us that our worth isn’t in our Babylon, but in our deliverer. I made new notes in my planner this morning. And each day that brings change will remind me that God will teach. He will teach me if I allow myself to abide in his presence during times like this. Then, what’s written on my planner page for today won’t matter as much.