A shotgunning look into my random thought patterns, turning up surprisingly non-random, non-trivial connects on several hoopy wavelength. Your Mileage May Vary.
When it comes to praying, I'm an irritant to myself. I remind myself to pray, and sometimes, I even remember to pray. One thing I do know is that when I focus on praying according to a program, I pray more, and my prayers mean more. I also tend to pray more often. Seeing something will remind me to pray.
I want to ask you to join me in prayer for the next several days.
I'm using something the Methodists published some time ago, it's called "A Guide to Prayer" and the publishing house is The Upper Room. It follows a liturgy and is intended for minister to use in the spiritual development of themselves. I find this book very useful when I remember to pick it up and use it :)
Here's what you do:
1. Speak an invocational prayer
2. Read a Psalm
3. Read a scripture selection
4. Read some reflective devotional material (supplied in the book).
5. Pray for the church, others, and yourself
6. Reflect on the scriptures you've read, silently, and write down your thoughts.
7. Sing a hymn
8. Pray a benediction.
The week begins on Monday, and runs to Sunday. you use Sunday to figure out where you are on this calendar. This week is Devo #33: "Christian Maturity"
Psalm is 84
Scripture reading for
Monday : Luke 18:18-30.
Tuesday : Galatians 5:16-24.
Wednesday : Philippians 2:12-18
Thursday : 1 Timothy 4:6-16
Friday : 2 Timothy 2:1-13
Saturday : 1 John 4
Sunday : 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27; Psalms 46; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17; Mark 4:26-34
Here's the Psalm:
84:1 How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
2 My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
3 Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.
4 Blessed are those who dwell in your house,
ever singing your praise!
Selah
5 Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
6 As they go through the Valley of Baca
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
7 They go from strength to strength;
each one appears before God in Zion.
8 O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer;
give ear, O God of Jacob!
Selah
9 Behold our shield, O God;
look on the face of your anointed!
10 For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
the Lord bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does he withhold
from those who walk uprightly.
12 O Lord of hosts,
blessed is the one who trusts in you!
From this Psalm, comes this song:
Psalms were meant to be heard as song. While incomplete, it's a good effort I think.
My goal, over the next week, is to continue this devotional and prayer book, and to do it for the week after that, etc.
I would also like you to join me in prayer, in the contemplation of Psalm 84, and in the application of scripture to the here and now.
If you would like to share insight, please do!
Tomorrow I will post some thoughts on the Scripture for the day.
My goal will be to pray and blog each day about this series of scriptures. Keep writing. Just keep writing...
The universe exists in spite of Inertia...
That is a blessed finger in the eye of materialism.
Inertia tears at me again.
Ugh.
I get to a point where I'm just doing the same things over and over again, until one day, something gets neglected, and not picked up again.
Inertia. It kills me slowly day by day. Until a week goes by, then a month, then a year, then two years, then ten years.
Inertia. I can't stand it, but then again, I can't stand not having that next Soda, or that next candy bar. Give me the sugar buzz.
Inertia.
Leave the mess alone, just let it be, this other mess needs cleaning first (and more often), little by little, I'm crowded out until it spills over into whatever I'm doing.
Inertia is fear.
fear is the mindkiller.
Inertia is the enemy.
How can I deal with this inertia? How can I grow?
I'm pondering my cucumber vines. They are getting long, when they get the right amount of sun, water, and nutrition, they grow well, and fast. Then, all of a sudden, one day, the vine starts to lose leaves at the bottom. The end keeps growing, but if the end stops growing, the vine dies. Death catches up.
The cucumber feels the effects of inertia.
I suppose there are several stages of growth, physical growth, mental growth, spiritual growth. The inertia of any one can carry over to the next, so I learned a new skill, one that will help me physically develop some dexterity and keep my fingers moving, one that will help me mentally by keeping my mind focused on one task while monitoring all the rest (my mind is a skattagun folks, hence the blog name) of reality, and it is one that will help me spiritually by keeping me connected to the lessons of the past, and how great lessons subtly reveal themselves to you over time.
"I'm just tyin' a square knot over and over, right over left left over right..."
Grandpa's words trailed off at the sight unfolding before me.
There was a beltbuckle, and string. Nylon string. He was making a belt, by hand. I was somewhere around 10 or 11 and my mind was fascinated by it. The belt took shape over the next week. When he was done, he gave it to me, sometimes I still wear it.
Somewhere in that is a lesson in patience. It's up to you to learn it.
Recently, his words echoed in my mind when I gained a new insight into something his son(my Daddy) told me once on the subject of knots. More specifically, it was on the subject of the hangman's noose.
We were going somewhere with some purpose in mind, and I had a bight of some small diameter unremarkable cordage in my then teenaged hands. I was trying to figure out how to tie a noose. For some reason it fascinated me, but I couldn't quite understand it. When my dad asked me what I was doing, I replied honestly that I was trying to tie a noose.
He took the cordage and quickly tied the noose, telling me something that often echos in my brain:
"Most people don't understand what they see"
wow. That's so patently obvious I couldn't appreciate the depth and beauty of the statement.
At the time, I took the advice at face value, and applied it to the knot. He gave me the proper lecture about not tying a noose with 13 loops, and about how the knot was more useful than people think, pointing out how it could be used in fishing, and other applications. Now I look upon his advice with new eyes. Most people don't understand what they see. A lot of times I don't understand what I see. I wonder if you do.
When I see something a lot of times it takes me a minute to figure out that what I'm seeing is a chance. Sometimes I see a chance to mess up, others a chance to do something great and powerful. I'm slowly training myself to see every chance as a chance to do right. I want you to think about this for a minute. Every chance you take, is a chance to do right. My friend, the grey is an illusion. There is no grey, you don't understand what you are seeing.
Every choice, every chance, is a chance to do right, and sometimes, you do wrong. You make millions of choices every week, sometimes, you get the choice right, others you get the choice wrong, and most importantly, your choices interact with the choices of others around you in a way that you cannot possible have hope of perceiving. That's what's grey, the myriad decisions viewed from afar.
When you learn that you cannot perceive the consequences of your choices beyond the nearest of futures, and most immediate of contexts, inertia cannot control you. Inertia is conquored by humbly recognizing the limit of your perception. I choose to tie knots to keep from tying myself into knots.
