Tag: pray

Categories
enough prayer

Why Does It Take So Long To Remember to Pray?

Last night this little man was not very well [This is not a photograph from last night :)] He woke about 10.30 and we were up and wandering the streets till about 1pm with him with a squiggie tummy. Thankfully I live in a very safe area and did not see a soul whilst wandering about. And also the promised rain did not appear during the times I was out.

Eventually we crawled back into bed again and he wrapped himself around me like a child with a bad tummy needing a hug. It was then that I prayed for Jesus to heal Renly’s tummy and for me to get a good night’s sleep – what was left of it. Of course Renly was asleep in seconds and slept in until gone 7 and I was asleep not long after and woke when the next door neighbour started his car to go to work just before 7.

What struck me was why didn’t I pray sooner?

From the moment Renly woke I work through a range of emotions. Some of which were: resigned that this is what I had to do; being mad at him for eating some that had upset his tummy; being angry that once he was outside he seemed more than happy to be going for a walk on a street light pavements; gratitude that we live in a safe neighbourhood and do have grass pavements; fed up with myself that I kept getting dressed and didn’t just make him go in the backyard rather than the street; to just a bit fed up with it. Nearly 3 hours it took me before I thought of praying!!!

How often do we all do that? Especially if it is a situation we can cope with? We take the “I can handle this on my own” attitude rather than “Ok Father I need someone to lean on”.

It wasn’t lack of faith or lack of trust because once I prayed I truly believed God would heal my dog and give me the sleep I needed. I just took a while to get there. Perhaps it comes from something deep seated about not wanting to worry God about trivial things when there is so much else going on in the world?

I am grateful that even though I was independent to begin with God didn’t tell me I should have asked soon. No God just got on and healed my dog’s tummy so that we could both sleep.

There’s no reprimanding with God. No blaming. No if onlys. No “you should have asked sooner“. God just always turns up when we turn to God and is there for us. And for that I am more than grateful.

And I only hope I can remember this and pray sooner, give the whole thing to God sooner, and be able to rest in the situation. And not think that my stuff isn’t important ‘enough‘ to bother God with!

Categories
being Doing

Being Really Human

Photographed by me on Christmas Day 2023

This is a follow on from yesterday’s post on how Deborah and Jael were most powerful by being in situ and not trying to fill their day with many things. Yet this is so often what we do even as Christians.

We pray as an activity rather than as a just being. But often if we try the just being we then need to tell someone about that. Or to fill in time we read a book. It becomes another activity. We got to church. We join a club. We meet with others. We do things all the time. We rarely just sit about “wasting time”.

Like I said Jael could have been somewhere else being busy but instead I like to think she was at the entrance to her tent maybe watching the battle unfurl in the valley below. She wasn’t waiting for God to use her, which I think we can often be guilty of, but she was just being.

I have been amazed at how many fitness apps and organisational apps and books are being advertised as something to “fit into your busy life” as though being busy is the important bit. And not being busy is wasting time. When we see someone they are “what have you been up to?” and rarely ask “how are you?” And even if they do ask “how are you?” that is quickly followed by “what have you been doing?” And a young friend of mine once showed me how people ask younger people “What have you been up to?” and even “what have you done at school/college/exams are you taking/doing in your future?” and rarely ask them how they are leading to that conviction that doing nothing is not a good thing.

As you know I’ve been challenged on this recently and I decided to do some QEC around it. Turns out that, for me, and I suspect for others, I worry about what other people will think. I feel that to justify my existence I should be doing something., that I should not be wasting my time and that I should be productive. So I get busy busy busy and then don’t have time for what really matters – being me.

I am now in my 6th decade and there are those things that pull to say “time is running out” and that one should “do something with one’s life“. Now Jael was just being by her tent and because of that God could use her. She may have been young. She may have been old. But she was there. And I don’t think she was sitting there going “God use me” or even bargaining with God that if she learned how to be then God could use her.

Also I am learning if I am not busy doing then I have time to think. Not think about what I can do but just ponder life. I probably pray more as a chatting with God thing than an activity. It is a longer process. I also read a lot more which gives me more things to think about.

We live in a world, whether sacred or secular, that tells us we should be doing. And not just doing but being seen to be doing. We need to have something to tell people. But I am finding the more that I am just being the more I can listen to people because I’m not tired, not stressed, not wondering what I should be doing to fill my time. It means I have time to walk the extra round of the park to find out how someone is, time to go for coffee, time to listen to my husband, my children, my friends, to God.

I don’t know if I’ll even be expected to drive a metaphorical tent peg through someone’s head [whatever that means in 21st Century North Wales terms] but I do hope I am sitting by my tent to do whatever God wants of me if God ever does. And I also hope that if I spend the rest of my life hanging out by my tent and am never used I will also known and trust I have been in the right place.

Categories
crisis Trust God

From Crisis to Crisis

This was my dog’s latest crisis – being trapped on the stair by the cat whilst I hoovered downstairs!!!

We seem to lurch from one media reported crisis to the next. All of which are pretty scary to say the least – whether it is the Russia/Ukraine war or what is going on with Hamas and the Israelites in Israel and Gaza, as well as our lurching UK NHS and education system crisis and the cost of living crisis. We are constantly being pulled to worry about things outside our control. I think this is why in my area at the moment there is so much focus on a local council threatening to ban dogs from its beaches all year round to the new 20 mile per hour speed limits. These are things we can control, things we can do something about.

I had been planning a post about how trivial these complaints are when so much else is going on but over this past week I “got it”. Yes we can send money to UNICEF for Ukraine, Gaza and Israel but we can’t do much to change the situation. But we can sign petitions for both the 20 mph changes and the dog ban on the beaches. We can moan to our local councils, who more often than not will listen to us and definitely will not shoot us. We are so lucky in this county to be able to do that. And, especially with local matters things often change because we could bump into our councilors in the park, in the pub, in the supermarket. And many of them are where they are because local matters are important. We can make a change

We cannot stop the atrocities in the Middle East, in Ukraine, with modern day slavery, with drugs, with all sorts of awfulness that actually we do forget about once it has moved away from the headlines. Even with our own health and education systems, if we are not affected personally we do forget about them.

The media encourages both that feeling of panic and of worry but once we “get used to” what is going on they find something else to cause us panic and worry. So we do then look to something, like dog bans or 20 mph speed changes, to vent that worry and panic on. It is all short term but it does sometimes help.

Prayer is one way to go. Although sometimes that can feel like God isn’t listening. How long does one pray for peace and watch people die? For people to stop abusing those more vulnerable than they are? For people to not need drugs and alcohol to find peace of mind and wholeness? It takes a certain type of person to keep hammering at God on those subjects when nothing seems to be happening.

So how do we trust that God is listening? This I cannot answer. I’m hoping when I get to heaven I will. But I have to have faith. Faith that my little, often half remembered prayers, get heard and thrown into the bigger pot.

He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God’s people, on the golden altar in front of the throne. 4 The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand.

Revelation 8:3-4

Though, like with much of the book of Revelation this is confusing because all these prayers get sent up and given to God then the angels cast down all sorts of nastiness on the earth. But I do have to have faith that God hears, that God listens and most importantly that God knows best.

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see

Hebrews 11:1

This isn’t easy in the small things – like the death of a fellow dog walker, the death of an acquaintance from stomach cancer and another acquaintance from secondary breast cancer in this last month. But if my hope and faith isn’t in God then where is it? It can’t be in the media because that is fickle, as are the politicians, the economists, the world leaders, the leaders of terrorist groups, even my employers, parents, etc. They are fickle all of them. All are searching for keeping themselves safe.

God on the other hand doesn’t care what we think of them. In fact God doesn’t care if we give them a gender or not. God made us all so that we can love them completely, love each other completely and unconditionally, and they can love us with relentless conditional love. When we don’t do our part because we are scared, wanting our own way, fickle, fearful, etc then we to often pray “my will be done because I’m scared if you don’t do it my way things will get worse” rather than “your will be done because you know best and I trust you”

So with all this madness of people hating each other, of people fearing each other, of money being the biggest goal, are you, am I, willing to trust handing things over to God? Whether our worries are the wars and poverty in the world or personal things like 20 mph speed limits can we tell God our worries without telling them how to sort it. And will we be able to trust they have heard and trust that they can sort it?