The Prayer of an Insomniac...

God, it looks like this is going to be another sleepless night... If You are my rest, why do I lay awake at night with my mind going around in circles? Help me be still and know that You are God. That the questions and yearnings of my heart are known to You, and that You, who have started a good work in me, will continue it until the day of Jesus Christ. Father, I thank You for chastening me, even when I despised Your correction. I know You do not enjoy disciplining me, but do it for my benefit, so that I look more and more like Your Son. Please continue to lead me, even when my feet stray, as they are so wont to do... Help me to be a beacon of Your Light against the growing tide of darkness, not just in great things, but small. Grant me Your peace. Still my heart, and calm my mind. I love You, and love Your appearing. Amen.

When the only thing I know to pray is "Father"

So often, when I approach the throne of grace, I really don't know what to say to God. Sometimes, the pain is too sharp, the joy too overwhelming. Sometimes, I just want to worship Him, but can't find words big enough, or grand enough to fit what I feel about Him. Sometimes, I can't pin my thoughts down, and I just dump them in His lap to untangle as He sees fit. And sometimes, my brain is shock, and I couldn't form a coherent thought if my life depended on it. Thankfully, He is omnipotent, and through His Holy Spirit, reaches beyond our finite ability to understand what it is we want to say, and speaks His peace into our lives.

Likewise the Spirit also helps our weakness: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.- Romans 8:26

Thoughts on national identity based on musings while watching coverage of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee

The Queen of the United Kingdom just celebrated her Diamond Jubilee, 60 years on the throne. Watching the coverage, I can't help but think that the British, and other Europeans, have something we Americans just don't have. The British have a figurehead. A national mascot. A symbol of what it means to be British, something to be proud of, regardless of political affiliation.

In America, all figureheads are political players. The President is loved by about a third of the country, despised by a third, with the final third blowing up and down the field, depending on who has the political football today. We are not united by anything, except that we disagree with each other. We don't even have a uniting philosophy. There's the TEA Party, the Occupiers, the neo-Nazis and a resurgent Black Panther Party, Republicans and Democrats, free marketers and socialists, social conservatives and social progressives, Christians, Muslims, atheists and people that are "None of the Above".

Granted, the degree of friction is minimal in most cases. Most just want to live their lives as they see fit. Nevertheless, the fact remains that there is not really any glue holding America together. Maybe it is the result of being an immigrant country, a melting pot of cultures, races, ideas, religions, and people,. The lack of a common history, a national identity is sad, but the fact is, there is nothing about America that ties us together.

Thoughts about the Potter

1The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD saying, 2“Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will announce My words to you.” 3Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. 4But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make.

      5Then the word of the LORD came to me saying, 6“Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel. 7“At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it; 8if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it. 9“Or at another moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to build up or to plant it; 10if it does evil in My sight by not obeying My voice, then I will think better of the good with which I had promised to bless it. 11“So now then, speak to the men of Judah and against the inhabitants of Jerusalem saying, ‘Thus says the LORD, “Behold, I am fashioning calamity against you and devising a plan against you. Oh turn back, each of you from his evil way, and reform your ways and your deeds.”’12“But they will say, ‘It’s hopeless! For we are going to follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.’- Jeremiah 18:1-12

The last few weeks, I have been mulling this passage, and a sermon from it, in my mind. Since the Lord has given no indication that preaching is going to happen, I'm just going to throw out some of  my thoughts and see what happens....

We all know the old song, "Have Thine Own Way". We sing it at invitation time at church, and we always sing the line "Thou are the Potter, I am the clay. Mold me and make me, after Thy will, while I am waiting yielded and still." In the passage that verse is drawn from, God reveals to Jeremiah one of the fundamental truths about His relationship to man, and the depth, the utter surrender need to honestly ask that line of God is revealed.   Despite the desires of man, God is ultimately in control, molding our lives according to His divine purpose. While God is love, and peace, and mercy, He is also justice, righteousness, and holiness. He, as our Heavenly Father, is both protector and source of discipline for His children. 

Recently in my life, God has taken me to the potter's house. I had head knowledge of how His divine plan should take preeminence in my life as a Christian, but I had just started...cruising on spiritual autopilot. I found out what kind of mistake that can be. He broke me. Actually, He let me break myself, and now He is starting to remold me. I can tell that I am not going to be what I was originally going to be. Choices that I have made have shut doors that were once open to me. Things that God had intimated were part of the plan for my life, no longer are. Perhaps, more than anything, I mourn what I could have been for Him.  But I have learned that the Potter's hands are full of love for his work, no many times He has to break the misshapen and start the wheel again. And I am assured that I am on my way to being God's masterpiece, created anew in Jesus and foreordained to good works (Ephesians 2:10)