So Many Prayer Needs

Good morning on this Lord's Day, Father God, and this Father's Day.  I am here at Appletree watching the worship service on the downstairs television, via AirPlay (neat program!), at the invitation of our silly beagle.  He is not allowed on the upstairs sofa, but he is allowed on the downstairs futon.  Hence, this location.

My Father in heaven, Your name is most holy.  May Your Kingdom come and may Your will be done.  It is so hard for me to see what is happening in the United States as Your will--but then again, You have said that Your kingdom is *not* of this world, haven't You?  One of the things that saddens my heart so deeply is the deception of people who claim to follow You.  Sometimes I fear that I am the one being deceived.  May it not be so, Father.  May I stay so close to You, to Jesus, to the Spirit that You will tell me what is truth and what is falsehood.

The title of this post reflects my feeling overwhelmed by all the issues requiring prayer: those of which I am aware, and SO many that dodge my awareness.  Just for some kind of accountability, please allow me to free-associate here for prayer needs:

• My own little family: my husband and my two daughters and all their various life needs
• My family of origin: my mother (age, blindness, peace in her needs and pains), my sister with dementia, my sister with a daughter caught in alcoholism.
• My sons-in-law: Tue and his journey to a relationship with You, Chris (technically not yet my son-in-law, but...) and his immigration hurdles and potholes.
• My in-laws through my husband: the urgent medical problems of my brothers-in-law Cliff and Bruce, my own challenging emotional disconnection from the others in the family.
• My church, its pastors and staff and ministries.
• This country--I can no longer say "my" country.  (Tom is preaching about idols, and he rightly points out that some idolatry may look a bit like patriotism or loyalty to a person or party--my interpretation, but I believe a valid one.)
• Our Ice Cream Outreach next week--weather, attendance, etc.
• MY OWN HEART, which is feeling crusty.  I grow impatient, frustrated, and sometimes arrogant regarding my own grasp of complicated concepts when others are slower to understand if they understand at all.

Why?

"For false messiahs and false prophets will rise up and perform great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even God's chosen ones."  Matthew 24:24

Father God, my Father in heaven, Your name is holy.  I have been pondering the theme of "truth" in my devotional times, in conjunction with my annual theme of "peace."  I looked up the number of times the word "truth" occurs in the New International Version--and not any variation of the word or related synonym--and the number is 137.  I would learn from this that truth is very important to You.

I titled this post "Why?" because I am troubled by the deception of good people by the blatant lying of the former President.  It grieves my heart deeply that people, some of whom I love, are blinded and fooled by a shameless charlatan.  You would think that with 37+ years of experience in psychiatry, I would know how useless it is to reason with a deluded person.  That is what I see: delusion, psychosis, paranoia, arrogance, magical thinking, and circular reasoning.  Remember when I took a logic class in undergraduate school?  I still remember much of the content.  Now, I fear, the folie a deux is really a folie a beaucoup, and the presentation of any truth by any responsible, trustworthy person would be torpedoed as "rigged" or "tainted" or "biased."

Your kingdom come, Your will be done.  Is this Your will?  Maybe it is?  As we get closer to the end times (maybe not "imminent" in my desired understanding, but maybe "imminent" in the sense that seems to be happening in the political world), no matter how faithful Your people are, things are going to be bad.  But light shines brightest in the darkness, doesn't it?  I fear that my own light, and perhaps the light of the Church, is a low-wattage light.  I need to have You power up my lumens and clean my vessel so that You shine through me.

Lead me not into temptation, Father.  My biggest temptations occur in my heart, soul, and mind.  I get sarcastic, snarky, angry, condescending--and not loving, not reflective of You.  

For Yours is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, forever and ever~~Amen!