Psalms 3-5
I feel like sleeping for an extended period of time Lord. I don't know how long I can keep up this early morning ritual of getting to the gym for an hour, having tennis practice, and all the other things that I'm responsible for. Right now I'm so tired I can hardly even bring myself to type. Any time I stop to think I find myself staring off into the blank walls of the office.
But these are the sacrifices I make for You. I hope my dreariness on many days reminds You and communicates clearly how much I love You and how much I believe that our relationship and Your Word is what makes me truly healthy. I can stare blankly around the room, have difficulty concentrating, write a blog entry that seems to be a waste of time, and yet, it is all for You. So somehow that makes this time a little bit easier to bear but still...
The psalms I read today were all psalms of the "cry." David asking God to deliver him from his enemies or thanking God for deliverance from his enemies. I find it very comforting how many of these psalms are disgruntled yet hopeful cries for You to act in Your power within the realm of life. Then it seems like most of the rest of these ancient prayers are thanks for the times that you did act and praise for the love that saves us.
So this entry is my cry, save me from my tiredness and lack of sleep. Give me a quiet evening or a two-hour delay of school. This is my true prayer this morning. At least for me. Lord, in my tiredness don't let me forget my responsibilities to be an agent of Your love.
Showing posts with label cry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cry. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
A Theology of Waiting: Day One
Readings: Psalms 5 & 6, Isaiah 1:10-20
This year, Exodus is following the church calendar year and celebrating Advent. I've decided to pick up some readings and follow along as well. And I need to. The season of Advent is all about the coming of Your presence among us. The season of Advent celebrates Your power of deliverance, but acknowledges to begin with that there are times when we don't feel that You are with us at all. Maybe it is divine appointment, but I feel that I am in one of those times right now.
So as Psalm 5 says, I'm here this morning to lay my requests before You and begin the process of waiting in expectation. My request is rather simple, I want to want this again. Tiredness and distance have made this morning devotional time seem like a formality rather than a relished opportunity to commune with the Holy. I want this time to be like the times of my fast, where I was eager to seek Your presence. I have not taken the time since tennis season to wait on You with any expectation. Now I am slowing myself down and deciding to wait. Will You please honor that by showing up?
And so...what do I do in this waiting? That is the question I seek to figure out during this Advent season. I cannot be inactive and just assume Your work will relieve me of all responsibilities. I must be active in my faith, but the question is how?
First thing I notice from the psalms this morning is the cry. Look at all of these verses:
- Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my sighing.
- Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray.
- My soul is in anguish. How long, O LORD, how long?
- I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.
I see from that set that the crying out part of waiting is important. I cannot be waiting on Your presence and be silent about it. That has been my problem since tennis season. In my hurried devotional times, I have read Scripture and not digested it. But my biggest mistake was not taking the time to pray. This blog is basically a prayer. My poetry blog is many things, but during the last cycle it wasn't really a prayer. So not posting here was a rushing of things, not a time saver at all. Here I bring before You my thoughts and words. Here I cry to You, I need Your presence!
Cry is important, I wish I could just stop with this because it seems focused for this morning. But there is certainly another strand wrapping through the readings this morning. That is the strand of obedience and right living. The strand of giving up our sinful attitudes. It is strong in Isaiah:
- Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.
- When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean.
That last Scripture especially hits home this morning. When I reach out to You in prayer, You will not receive unless I have washed an made myself clean. Repentance, it goes right along with waiting. Primary actions of waiting seem to include crying and repenting.
Maybe I should say a word about repenting too, it means that I am also committing to live rightly from this day forward. So that's my goal today. See my efforts Lord, my successes and my failures, but know that I will strive today to "stop doing wrong, learn to do right!" In the daily grind of the school day, help me to "seek justice, encourage the oppressed..."
And begin to come to me in Your presence, I am finally waiting.
This year, Exodus is following the church calendar year and celebrating Advent. I've decided to pick up some readings and follow along as well. And I need to. The season of Advent is all about the coming of Your presence among us. The season of Advent celebrates Your power of deliverance, but acknowledges to begin with that there are times when we don't feel that You are with us at all. Maybe it is divine appointment, but I feel that I am in one of those times right now.
So as Psalm 5 says, I'm here this morning to lay my requests before You and begin the process of waiting in expectation. My request is rather simple, I want to want this again. Tiredness and distance have made this morning devotional time seem like a formality rather than a relished opportunity to commune with the Holy. I want this time to be like the times of my fast, where I was eager to seek Your presence. I have not taken the time since tennis season to wait on You with any expectation. Now I am slowing myself down and deciding to wait. Will You please honor that by showing up?
And so...what do I do in this waiting? That is the question I seek to figure out during this Advent season. I cannot be inactive and just assume Your work will relieve me of all responsibilities. I must be active in my faith, but the question is how?
First thing I notice from the psalms this morning is the cry. Look at all of these verses:
- Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my sighing.
- Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray.
- My soul is in anguish. How long, O LORD, how long?
- I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.
I see from that set that the crying out part of waiting is important. I cannot be waiting on Your presence and be silent about it. That has been my problem since tennis season. In my hurried devotional times, I have read Scripture and not digested it. But my biggest mistake was not taking the time to pray. This blog is basically a prayer. My poetry blog is many things, but during the last cycle it wasn't really a prayer. So not posting here was a rushing of things, not a time saver at all. Here I bring before You my thoughts and words. Here I cry to You, I need Your presence!
Cry is important, I wish I could just stop with this because it seems focused for this morning. But there is certainly another strand wrapping through the readings this morning. That is the strand of obedience and right living. The strand of giving up our sinful attitudes. It is strong in Isaiah:
- Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.
- When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean.
That last Scripture especially hits home this morning. When I reach out to You in prayer, You will not receive unless I have washed an made myself clean. Repentance, it goes right along with waiting. Primary actions of waiting seem to include crying and repenting.
Maybe I should say a word about repenting too, it means that I am also committing to live rightly from this day forward. So that's my goal today. See my efforts Lord, my successes and my failures, but know that I will strive today to "stop doing wrong, learn to do right!" In the daily grind of the school day, help me to "seek justice, encourage the oppressed..."
And begin to come to me in Your presence, I am finally waiting.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
While My Baby Cries...
So Gideon is going nuts right now because Courtney is trying to get him to lay back down and go to sleep on his own, no rocking, no holding, etc. She's being a wonderful wife and saying that I can just go ahead and go back to sleep, but it's hard to sleep with a baby that you love screaming in the other room. So, I guess that I figured I would come be with You and when buddy boy finally falls back asleep, I'll go cuddle up to my adorable but certainly frustrated wife.
So I'm not sure what's going on tonight, but yesterday I felt close to You when I wrote, now this early morning I feel far. Most of the times that I get up at odd hours to talk I can feel special movements of Your Spirit, this morning I get only faint whispers. I feel a lot of guilt this morning, from not helping with Gideon, to the obligations of tennis keeping me from being fully present at teaching meeting last night, to my non-detail-oriented self not paying attention to details and continually following up with AMBS. Pile on top of that the stress of teaching and the perhaps final week of tennis and the monster cookie from the Brew last night and my stomach is a mess right now.
I keep having this problem lately. I'm pretty sure of what I want from You, and my only way of gauging our relationship is whether I get it or not. I want to win tennis matches, and my mood and desire for devotion varies according to whether we win or not. I want my baby to stop crying so my wife can sleep (I've prayed for Your calming Spirit fifteen times now). And as Gideon continues to cry, I want to ask, "Where are You? I'm calling! Can You freaking not hear me?"
But that's all stupid. Babies have to learn to go to sleep on their own, and parents have to go through the difficult trials of teaching that. Why am I asking You to make it go away? Because I want things made easier for myself. I certainly need rest, and so does Courtney, and dealing with these things right now keeps us far away from rest. Our lives are often so scrambled during tennis season, we desire some peace. With the baby crying, there isn't a lot of peace. And very little sleep.
Can You make a greater good from all this craziness? Every time he stops wailing for a second I get hopeful, ready to explode into a praising spirit (which makes it all the more frustrating when he explodes into cries again). But the continual hope, the continual belief without fulfillment, that gets very painful. It starts to make me feel like not hoping and becoming cynical, and that is the opposite of faith.
That's where I'm at with tennis season as well. I have, we have all had in the tennis program, a lot of hope through the year. Our greatest fear is that our hope will be denied at the last second. Lord, allow our hope to come to fulfillment. Allow our work to be blessed. Continue to use our experiences, both good and bad, to draw us close to You. My heart is desperate within me. And yet I can't claim to know all of Your ways and how You are shaping situations for our good and for our growth. And therefore I only have one thing to cry:
Lord, have mercy on me!
So I'm not sure what's going on tonight, but yesterday I felt close to You when I wrote, now this early morning I feel far. Most of the times that I get up at odd hours to talk I can feel special movements of Your Spirit, this morning I get only faint whispers. I feel a lot of guilt this morning, from not helping with Gideon, to the obligations of tennis keeping me from being fully present at teaching meeting last night, to my non-detail-oriented self not paying attention to details and continually following up with AMBS. Pile on top of that the stress of teaching and the perhaps final week of tennis and the monster cookie from the Brew last night and my stomach is a mess right now.
I keep having this problem lately. I'm pretty sure of what I want from You, and my only way of gauging our relationship is whether I get it or not. I want to win tennis matches, and my mood and desire for devotion varies according to whether we win or not. I want my baby to stop crying so my wife can sleep (I've prayed for Your calming Spirit fifteen times now). And as Gideon continues to cry, I want to ask, "Where are You? I'm calling! Can You freaking not hear me?"
But that's all stupid. Babies have to learn to go to sleep on their own, and parents have to go through the difficult trials of teaching that. Why am I asking You to make it go away? Because I want things made easier for myself. I certainly need rest, and so does Courtney, and dealing with these things right now keeps us far away from rest. Our lives are often so scrambled during tennis season, we desire some peace. With the baby crying, there isn't a lot of peace. And very little sleep.
Can You make a greater good from all this craziness? Every time he stops wailing for a second I get hopeful, ready to explode into a praising spirit (which makes it all the more frustrating when he explodes into cries again). But the continual hope, the continual belief without fulfillment, that gets very painful. It starts to make me feel like not hoping and becoming cynical, and that is the opposite of faith.
That's where I'm at with tennis season as well. I have, we have all had in the tennis program, a lot of hope through the year. Our greatest fear is that our hope will be denied at the last second. Lord, allow our hope to come to fulfillment. Allow our work to be blessed. Continue to use our experiences, both good and bad, to draw us close to You. My heart is desperate within me. And yet I can't claim to know all of Your ways and how You are shaping situations for our good and for our growth. And therefore I only have one thing to cry:
Lord, have mercy on me!
Friday, January 18, 2008
How serious?
Scripture Reading Today: Exodus 1-3
Many thoughts running through my head today Lord, which is good. It seems to have been a long time since I've really had this flow going, where I am truly excited to be learning and contemplating. But with my head going in so many different good places, I'm not sure where to direct this conversation this morning.
I guess, both of my main thoughts do come together on one issue. Seriousness. As I think about Scripture, conviction, Your will some things are murky to me. Many things I just don't understand. But some, admittedly few, things are crystal clear. The biggest of those clear things was reemphasized today in my reading of Exodus.
"I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering." --- Exodus 3:7
I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that You are concerned with those who cry out, with those who are suffering. Your call to us, as those who love You and are blessed by You, is right from this same heart. Be concerned about the poor, the oppressed, those who are crying out. But serious concern, serious enough to do something.
I know that You want us to be concerned. That's why I spout that off all over the place, to anyone who is willing to listen. But what do I do about it? Often times, just like the other things I lack discipline about, I sit back and say yes this is wonderful, yes let's help those who don't have enough, yes, yes, yes! But then the time continues to get away from me while I just sit there thinking, "Where do I start? How do I start? Will I really make a difference? How can I even relate to their world?"
The thing that is most frustrating is that right now I know where to start. We have relationships with those who are in need. I know how to start. You've been pulling on my heart ever since Gideon's birth about this and I know what I should do. Will I make a difference...yea, that's really a ridiculous question by me. It's honest, but ridiculous. Can I relate, I don't think they'll care. That's only a fear of mine.
But am I serious about my faith? That's a crucial element here. Will I push for what my head believes and look to You for strength and hope, or will I retreat into fear? If I was putting money on me, I know I'd lay it on the fear. But I'm not, I'm putting money on You (well, okay, not really). When we're weak, when we would choose fear, You are strong.
Many thoughts running through my head today Lord, which is good. It seems to have been a long time since I've really had this flow going, where I am truly excited to be learning and contemplating. But with my head going in so many different good places, I'm not sure where to direct this conversation this morning.
I guess, both of my main thoughts do come together on one issue. Seriousness. As I think about Scripture, conviction, Your will some things are murky to me. Many things I just don't understand. But some, admittedly few, things are crystal clear. The biggest of those clear things was reemphasized today in my reading of Exodus.
"I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering." --- Exodus 3:7
I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that You are concerned with those who cry out, with those who are suffering. Your call to us, as those who love You and are blessed by You, is right from this same heart. Be concerned about the poor, the oppressed, those who are crying out. But serious concern, serious enough to do something.
I know that You want us to be concerned. That's why I spout that off all over the place, to anyone who is willing to listen. But what do I do about it? Often times, just like the other things I lack discipline about, I sit back and say yes this is wonderful, yes let's help those who don't have enough, yes, yes, yes! But then the time continues to get away from me while I just sit there thinking, "Where do I start? How do I start? Will I really make a difference? How can I even relate to their world?"
The thing that is most frustrating is that right now I know where to start. We have relationships with those who are in need. I know how to start. You've been pulling on my heart ever since Gideon's birth about this and I know what I should do. Will I make a difference...yea, that's really a ridiculous question by me. It's honest, but ridiculous. Can I relate, I don't think they'll care. That's only a fear of mine.
But am I serious about my faith? That's a crucial element here. Will I push for what my head believes and look to You for strength and hope, or will I retreat into fear? If I was putting money on me, I know I'd lay it on the fear. But I'm not, I'm putting money on You (well, okay, not really). When we're weak, when we would choose fear, You are strong.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Be Not Quiet
Texts:
- Psalms 81-84, 126
- Luke 5-6
- Nehemiah 11-13
Oh Lord, my God, my only hope of salvation, be not quiet in life this week. Be not quiet in the life of Exodus Community, bring about Your will in a mighty way so that we know exactly where to go. This week, I pray that You will bless my intent to sharpen my hearing, by speaking very clearly. I want to take the time to listen to You, so don't be quiet when I come.
Of course, I expect to be overwhelmed with all that You will say. That's okay, I long to hear Your voice and move under Your direction. It seems for to long I've been in charge. I've been interpreting Your word, I've been looking for the special golden nugget of Scripture, I've been trying to put things together, I've been trying to make the connections. It is so much better to leave these things up to You. Then real meaning flows out. So allow me to be quiet, while You speak and move and direct. The whole story of life is that You do everything, we simply respond. Allow me to back off and let You move.
I am here, of course, because I have so many questions that I have not been able to figure out with my own work. I have been busy and overwhelmed and not finding what I sought. It is simple really, I wasn't truly seeking in You. How easy it is for us to begin to take over. Center my work and my will back in You Lord. That is the only way that it is worth anything anyway.
Yes, this is a cry. This is a cry I've needed to have for a while now. It is a familiar cry for sure, but it needs to develop into a constant cry. This is my response to Your work today.
- Psalms 81-84, 126
- Luke 5-6
- Nehemiah 11-13
Oh Lord, my God, my only hope of salvation, be not quiet in life this week. Be not quiet in the life of Exodus Community, bring about Your will in a mighty way so that we know exactly where to go. This week, I pray that You will bless my intent to sharpen my hearing, by speaking very clearly. I want to take the time to listen to You, so don't be quiet when I come.
Of course, I expect to be overwhelmed with all that You will say. That's okay, I long to hear Your voice and move under Your direction. It seems for to long I've been in charge. I've been interpreting Your word, I've been looking for the special golden nugget of Scripture, I've been trying to put things together, I've been trying to make the connections. It is so much better to leave these things up to You. Then real meaning flows out. So allow me to be quiet, while You speak and move and direct. The whole story of life is that You do everything, we simply respond. Allow me to back off and let You move.
I am here, of course, because I have so many questions that I have not been able to figure out with my own work. I have been busy and overwhelmed and not finding what I sought. It is simple really, I wasn't truly seeking in You. How easy it is for us to begin to take over. Center my work and my will back in You Lord. That is the only way that it is worth anything anyway.
Yes, this is a cry. This is a cry I've needed to have for a while now. It is a familiar cry for sure, but it needs to develop into a constant cry. This is my response to Your work today.
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