For Myself

Lamentations 1:1-2:22

My take-away: Lord, You get ANGRY when Your people turn away from You.  "He wove my sins into ropes to hitch me to a yoke of captivity." (1:14)  That is a powerful but disturbing word picture!  It is we who provide the Lord--You--with the materials to fashion our own bonds.  Conversely, of course, we cannot NOT sin, not without the help and empowerment of the Holy Spirit.  Whence comes Your anger, then, Lord?  From not having us turn to You and be in relationship, devotion, with You.  You do deserve all my worship (song!) and all my (pitiful) life (no bargain there) but You love to take things such as me and redeem them by recycling and renewing!  Do that with me, please?  I am on the edge of a new decade in my life, and I wonder about finishing strong and perhaps in a different direction.  And do whatever needs to be done about my sins.  I don't want to have them made into ropes to hold me in captivity.  

In Jesus's name~~Amen.  (Holy Spirit, do Your thing in my life!)

The Most Awful Thing

My Heavenly Father, how can anyone bear the pain of what the Hicks family is enduring right now--the accidental death of a little boy by the mistake of his father?  I cannot even begin to wrap my head and heart around this.  Please bring supernatural comfort to the parents and grandparents (and Aunt Amanda, who babysat for our daughters so many years ago) because that is the only kind of comfort that is possible.  Groanings...Holy Spirit, these prayers are indeed too deep for words.  Somehow, bring something out of this that will bring glory to You (cannot see how right now, though) and peace to the parents.  In Jesus's precious name, for the sake of that precious young life~~Amen.

I Know ...

"I know I need to be in love
I know I've wasted too much time
I know I ask perfection of a quite imperfect world
And fool enough to think that's what I'll find."

(Lord, my husband texted me, "Home by 8."  It's 6:54 p.m. now.  :)  This entry was started on vacation to the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania because on the drive he brought CDs, one of which was a Carpenters one with this song on it.)

 Sometimes You speak to me through songs, and this one hit me squarely between the eyes.  The church that we attend has been an enormous frustration to me over the years (as You know well).  The "love" that this song references is, to me, not the romantic love between a man and a woman but the love that I think You want me to have for the church.  I cannot honestly claim to love it.  I tolerate it; I serve You and the children there; I genuinely enjoy and appreciate the people with whom we serve; but "love" that church?  No.  It bothers me.  I sense a spirit of divisiveness, of division, or whatever You might call it.  One website calls it a spirit of "darkness and disharmony, that seeks to divide and tear apart."  Another site outlines a sermon on the spirit of division, citing two verses from 1 Corinthians~

 ^1:10 I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.

 ^3:3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans?

 Agreeing with one another *in what you say* means...what?  And what about "perfectly united in mind and thought"?  It seems humanly impossible to agree all the time and to be "perfectly" anything.  

And with regard to the message from the Holy Spirit about my needing to be in love with the church--show me how, dear God.  You see all of my (I almost said "our" but that is not personal enough) crap and sin and You love me.  How can I see crap and sin in the church and still love it?  "I know I ask perfection of a quite imperfect [church]...and fool enough to think that's what I'll find."

Fool~interesting that such is the word that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians to challenge those who think they are wise.  May I become more foolish in my love for the church.  Amen!