My Unusual Journal
My Unusual Journal 2 – 6/14/11, Tuesday, 6/14/2011 10:49 PM
Still "Feeling My Way"
It’s day 2 of My Unusual Journal. I’m now winding down my day by working on this my maiden effort at writing anything close to a journal of my inner thoughts. This present effort can be termed “feeling my way.” I have no good idea if God will give me the green light, the red light or simply put me on hold for a season as far as this project is concerned. It’s in His capable hands.
My Journal – 6/15/11
Wednesday 6/15/2011 3:00 AM
It's the end of a long day. Lord, remember all my Prayer Burdens whose needs run wide and deep, like a river that pauses for none to catch their breath. Keep them, Lord, and meet all their needs. Keep us all through the brilliance of a sunny day or through the horrors of the night when the clouds of fear and doubt hide your blessed face. Keep them; keep me. Without you we have no hope, no compass and no salvation.
I like the Good Night Prayer my children used to recite before crawling safe into their beds. It takes me back to a simpler time when we didn’t have such a complexity of wickedness to face and overcome. Yet despite the convoluted machinations of wickedness we are still required to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves [childlike].” I too am a child, Lord, and tonight I exercise my childlike faith in you –
“Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep;
When in the morning light I wake,
Help me the path of love to take
And keep the same for thy dear sake.
Amen”
Wednesday 6/15/2011 7:20 AM
My wife woke me up today for Morning Prayer sponsored (I guess that is the right term) by the church’s Tribe of Levi, to which Pat and I have been assigned and for which I am glad. They are a group of spiritually alert men and women and quite friendly to this guy they’ve never met in person. God bless them.
After the usual physical travail (I overstate it a bit) and lashing my body into harness for a spiritually profitable day, I progressed further through the usual routine for the beginning of my day by a quasi diligent study of the Bible; that is, I read four chapters, two from the Old Testament and two from the New Testament. These morning readings are not in a deeply studious mode, but they are in sequential order and I do not whisk through them in 5 or10 minutes.
I could choose my daily Scripture reading in a random way by opening the Bible and reading wherever it fell open. It’s my choice to do it in a more systematic way. Either way is good as long as I read my Bible and don’t read the same chapter each day. The Bible is my source of inspiration, edification and comfort. It teaches me wisdom and as I read I expect the Spirit to open up my understanding of the words on the printed page. He makes them come to life.
This is not to say that every word or sentence instantly and spectacularly recharges my spiritual “battery”; no, but the continual reading has a very positive effect. I know it because I am the one that experiences the cumulative effects on my spiritual being when I am constantly being bombarded with these words of life. If I were permitted to read but one book in the world, I would unhesitatingly choose the Bible. It is my lifeline. It is my life.
Wednesday 6/15/2011 5:59 PM
I have just sent an e-mail to an “intermediary” (my term for a person bringing someone in need to my prayerful attention) and it made me think: There are so many persons needing help that it’s overwhelming. I have prayed that God would help me to feel the needs of my Prayer Burdens – and He has been gracious enough to answer that request, at least in part.
Now I can actually better “feel” the hurts of the ones for whom I’m praying. It is certainly not a miraculous or automatic happening: There are times I have to exert my empathy; I have to make a conscious effort to immerse myself in the matrix of suffering in which my brother or sister find themselves. God honors my effort and gives me the ability to feel or empathize with him or her as I have not always been able to do. It’s a thrilling thing.
But it doesn’t come without a price. It hurts – and what did I expect; a foot-stomping glory hallelujah occasion? That may come later when he/she and I (both of us) come out of our grueling test. But even now while I am in the furiously burning fire with my partner in pain, there is a deep down joy and praise for what God has done for my brother and me: my brother now has a colleague who can pray for him the effectual, fervent prayer that he needs – and I, what do I have? I have the sense of fulfillment that comes only from reaching out in love to a fellow creature in their direst hour and enduring the trial of their faith with them. And be assured: The bread I have cast upon the waters will no doubt return to me in my own time of grief and pain. (Ecc 11.1)
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