Dear God

Sometimes, Lord, that is all I can pray.  "Dear God."  I look around the world and see so much evil, brokenness, frank sin (and yes, even my own), and bleakness.  Maybe, just maybe, I see it because it is there.  What sometimes seems to happen is a wish for a rosy world where peace and love reign, and I am catastrophizing.  Am I?  Or are we--the world--really in the throes of childbirth, and the pain and problems are really powerfully there?

So today's verse from YouVersion punched me in the gut again.  Happening a lot this week!  

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.  The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.  James 5:16 NIV

I get it, Lord.  I need to reach out to family.  I tried this past weekend, and it didn't go well.  I will write because I can be more -- no, not more, but less reactive.  I am still so saddened by the "alternate reality" (I just read that term) that many people, including my own family members, are embracing. I also ask You to be ruthless in removing any deception from me, and in protecting me from an alternate reality.  I want to see the world with Your eyes, from Your perspective, in light of Your truth and Your goals.  I know that all is not what it seems to be.  But "Dear God," (again!) the juxtapositioning of truth and lie is so head-spinning that I cannot keep up.

Grace and graciousness, please, dear God, for my communication with my family.  I don't want to compromise truth; I am afraid that in my stubbornness I just don't want to compromise.  I ask for Your inspiration for my writing, and I really don't want to write without it.  

BTW, the YouVersion plan about Elisabeth Elliot is a little over-the-top.  I am skeptical of any human who can so unerringly choose faith and be such a remarkable believer.  (Jealous?)  I respect her and the hard life she had.  I have some admiration, a word I use cautiously, for the way in which she struggled to choose to submit to You.  However, whoever wrote this devotional edges up to a form of idolatry with her!  Help me to find that take-away nugget in these lessons from her life that You mean for me.