Thirty years ago, I fasted, prayed and cried out to God to heal my husband, Scott. He was dying, attached to life support, unconscious. So many in the church said, “Pray with faith for complete healing. God can’t possibly mean for your young husband and father of your three month old son to die. There will be great triumph and glory to His name when you see the healing!” Well, it’s a dangerous place to think you know what God is thinking and how he will act. It is presumption and arrogance.  Also, it hurts when He doesn’t do what you want him to. I put Him in a box and He didn’t fit. So the box broke. I, along with his parents, had to make the decision to take Scott off life support and watch him die.

After that time, it took a while to be able to pray. I didn’t trust God. I had been duped into the prosperity gospel-ish thinking that God owed me. I did all the right things. So He should keep up His end of the bargain. What a small God I said I was worshiping! In reality I was worshiping the image of what I thought God should be.

In his mercy, the Lord didn’t keep me in that place long. I kept reading the scriptures and my trust in who God truly is, that I learned by reading His word instead of just going by what other people said, began to grow. I saw Him as not just omnipotent and righteous but also good.

It’s funny how we humans tend to have to learn the same lesson over and over again. An engineer friend of mine once likened it to learning math. We start learning addition by learning that 1+1=2, but soon we add with more decimal places and then with unknown numbers and pretty soon it’s with polynomials. But at the core, it’s still addition. In the same way, we learn to trust God and trust that He is good. We learn to trust Him with different situations.

I am now facing another situation in which I feel like I have (mostly) done the right things, at least I have done the best I knew to do, but the situation seems hopeless. I struggle with feeling like God owes me, feeling like if I pray about this, will I get another “no?” But I am learning to pray and each time, open my hand and say, “Lord, do as you please. This is my heart’s cry, but You are Lord. And You know best.”

So yes, sometimes it hurts to pray. We want a particular answer and we don’t know if that’s the one that the Lord will give. But it hurts more to resent that I don’t always get things my own way. It hurts more to be mad at God. And ultimately, I don’t really want what He doesn’t want for me.

Psalm 84:11-12
For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does he withhold from those who walk up rightly.
O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!

Photo by Brennan Martinez on Unsplash

Today I saw a young Marine standing at parade rest, because that was how he was most comfortable. He was standing a ways off from the rest of the crowd, his eyes scanning, hoping to see a familiar face. It eluded him. The others around him were laughing and hugging, congratulations flying back and forth, everyone together reuniting. He stood alone.

Those of us who saw him wanted to just hug him. We were all moms of different ages, some of us new moms with toddlers playing in the grass and some of us having adult children living hours away. But either way, there was a tug in every mama’s heart.

I don’t know the back story. I don’t know why this young man was alone unexpectedly. But I know he didn’t want to be. None of us want to be. We want to be part of something. We want to belong. That’s why so many join the military. But even in the midst of being a part of something bigger than ourselves we can still be alone, feeling all the more the lonely for the crowd around us.

Isaiah 49:15-16 Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.

Lord, help us to remember that You will never leave us nor forsake us. When I feel beaten up by the world and alone in the midst of the laughing crowd, remind me that, as your chosen one, You will always hold me in the palms of your nail scarred hands.

Photo credit: Free photo 109891121 © creativecommonsstockphotos – Dreamstime.com

In my past two houses, I really tried to have a bird feeder. It is a calming thing to me to have these little creatures flitting to and fro seeming not to have a care in the world. But they just wouldn’t come. So when I put up my not so new bird feeder at this new house, I was thrilled when one by one the birds started coming. First sparrows arrived, then a nuthatch or two. Chickadees and finches soon followed. And today I even saw two woodpeckers approach.

But most of the time, it’s just sparrows. Plain and brown. That is kind of how I have seen myself a lot of time. Plain Jane (that’s even my middle name). There is nothing so fancy about me, no special red on my head, like the woodpecker. I can’t eat upside down like the nuthatch. I have no striking color contrast like the chickadee. But the sparrows are always there, and I am noticing a bit more of their personality. They can be territorial and grumpy. They get puffed up and full of themselves. Well, maybe my analogy gets a little lost there. But they do puff up. And that reminds me that I puff myself up too. They like to eat (guilty as charged). And they like company. There are so many of them and again, so normal, so average, so plain… just like me.

I think Jesus thought them ordinary too. In Matthew chapter 10, he said that they are sold two for a penny. That’s not very valuable in a worldly sense. But He doesn’t see things the way we do. He goes on to say in verse 28 of that chapter that not one of them will fall to the ground outside the will of the Father. He says that the sparrows matter to Him. And how much more do we, the pinnacle of creation, matter. He counts the very hairs on our head! He sent his Son to die on the cross so that His children could be washed clean and share in the righteousness of the Perfect One. Why? Why this sparrow? The only thing I can do in response is worship.

Phoebe…There are times when I am trying to teach her something new, and I will put a treat in my hand. Whew! Then I have her attention. She tries so hard to figure out what I am trying to get her to do. First she sits, then lies down, then does a high five, then rolls over, all the while looking at the hand that is holding the treat. After going through all the things she thinks I want her to do, she finally looks at me, at my face, at my eyes and I am finally able to communicate what it is that I want her to do. And, oh, is she eager to please. Once I do communicate the objective, she is quick to obey.

The way she looks at me reminds me of the way I want to look to God. Psalm 123:2 says, “Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, till he has mercy upon us.” I want to eagerly look to God knowing that He wants to communicate to me all that I need to know. I want to seek Him first, but I get so distracted looking for all the blessings. I so often don’t realize that the biggest blessing of all is knowing Christ.

Lord, like Phoebe, so often I run through all the things that I think you want me to do. I get so busy looking at the treat that I want so badly, that I forget to look to you, I forget to see things through your eyes. Help to me focus on you, on what you have commanded in your word, help me to be quick to obey. Lord, help me see You.