Thoughts on a Fall Morning

Wow, have I let this poor little blog slip away. I never meant to enter into blog silence, but it sure seems I have. I blame Facebook. That vortex of time wasting has ruined my blogging ability. There are days I wish I'd never given in to the invitation to join it, truth be told, but there's something about it that seems to lead to a no going back once you've been seduced by the siren song. You do know that the sirens in mythology were calling sailors to their own destruction, don't you? All that said, I find myself more and more wanting to tune out the song and turn it off. I am not at all convinced that having a smart phone has been overall a good thing. But ask me if I'm ready to give it up completely.

All that said to say that I miss the old-fashioned blog days a bit. I miss having something to say that took a little more thought than what tends to fill my typical status update these days. I'd like to walk away from momentary and time-wasting repeated scrolling of the news updates and get back to thinking through more regular blog posts. I am not, however, naive enough to make any sort of sweeping promise of a new post here every day for the next 30 days or anything, because I know myself much too well for that. But I do want to come back home and use this space to rejuvenate my writing bug, because I want to pick up my writing projects again and regain what I've lost to the mental energy drain of Facebook and constant connectivity. Ok, that's much more on this topic than I even intended to say when I sat down to write this post. There is a beautiful picture up there in the left corner that I've ignored in order to get these thoughts off my chest, so now, here's the post I meant to write when I sat down:

I have admitted here and elsewhere that I've found living in our new community challenging in some ways. Challenge isn't necessarily bad. It's good to stretch out of my comfort zone and learn to live a little. I didn't say easy, but I did say good. It is good because my good and faithful Redeemer, Lord, Savior, and God has placed our family here for such a time as this and for His glory and for our good. How do I know this? Because we are here. In the midst of a fairly stressful challenge recently, I was able to say to my husband, "You know, if we had not been here, this year, we would not have caught this and dealt with it when we have. Better now than later, and I'm thankful for it." Friends, that is God's grace. I am so thankful that He has brought me to the place where I can view challenges in this way and trust Him with it, realizing I am not 'all that' and that I need Him. How I need Him. We can see His hand and I'm so thankful that we can also trust His heart.

You know I grew up in Florida, and because of this, I had never seen a glorious, full-blown gorgeous Fall until I was in my twenties. I had, of course, read about the leaves changing, and I've always loved the season, but now that I have been able to live in parts of the country that actually experience the turning of the leaves for the past 5 or six years now, I have to confess to you that I never get tired of the beauty of this season. When I walk in my neighborhood full of old trees and drink in the vibrant colors, it just gives me a joy, because what I think every time I see these beautifully breath-taking colors, and what I often tell my kids, is that I am awestruck at our Creator God. He could have just made a functional world for us to live in, but He didn't stop there. No, He made it heart-achingly beautiful, too. What love and kindness He has shown to His creation! Every season, every different topography has an exquisite beauty to it that leads me to sing praise for His creativity and glory. If you have eyes to see and ears to hear it, the heavens declare the glory of God and His creation speaks to us of how glorious He is. Such thoughts ought to turn us to His word so that we can look deeply into this awesome God who would stoop to create such beauty.

And when we do look into His word, we see just how much love He has shown us, sinful, poor, wretched, and blind as we are. Because not only did He create us and design His creation to sustain us and delight us with its beauty, but He stooped to come down and walk among us in the person of Jesus Christ, fulfilling His law on our behalf, which we have broken in so many myriad ways, and He became the sacrifice for sin that our wretched state required, and made the way for us to be reconciled, made clean and right, with Him. He has opened the way for us to enter into the Holy of Holies as we pray, because we no longer have to fear His wrath when we have repented of our sin and placed our trust, our only hope, in Jesus, the way, the truth, and the LIFE.

I received a treasure in the mail yesterday from Truth for Life, Charles Spurgeon's Morning By Morning, and as I read the devotion for this morning, I came across this thought: "Constant wrestling  in prayer with God is sure to make the believer strong - if not happy. The nearest place to the gate of heaven is the throne of heavenly grace. Often alone, you will have plenty of assurance; seldom alone with Jesus, your faith will be shallow, polluted with many doubts and fears and not sparkling with the joy of the Lord. Since the soul-enriching path of prayer is open to the very weakest saint, since no achievements are required, since you are not invited to come because you are an advanced saint but freely invited if you are a saint at all, see to it, dear reader, that you are often in the place of private devotion. Be regularly on your knees, for in this way Elijah drew the rain upon Israel's famished fields." 

I got to thinking, why is prayer so hard? Why do people try to make prayer into something it isn't? How offensive I find it when people talk about 'sending prayers your way' or 'sending positive energy your way' as if prayer is some mystical, ephemeral, indefinable 'energy' we have power to send toward someone. That's offensive and it's foolish.  At least, if you understand what prayer actually is rather than making it some new-agey spirituality positivity thing, that is. Prayer is just us pouring our hearts out to God. Prayer is people who know God talking to Him, worshiping Him, and bringing requests to Him on behalf of people we care about. It isn't mystical energy we send around, and those misunderstandings make me so sad to hear and read. I understand they are written or said by people who mean well, are trying to say something positive and encouraging, and who just don't know the truth, and that makes me sad.  We who are in Christ have an awesome privilege in coming to our Father in prayer, and isn't that, ultimately, much more encouraging? To know that we can talk to the God who created all that is, and we aren't just hoping in some uncaring 'universe' as we try to send 'energy' around? And we have an awesome privilege and responsibility to share the good news of the gospel with our lost friends who only have hope in some 'positive energy' that ultimately has no power at all.  May I be a more vocal sharer of that good news. Days when we are reminded of His glory in such a way as I was when I took that picture ought to remind us to know His word and spend time with Him in prayer.