1 Chronicles 22:19 …devote your heart and soul to seeking
the Lord your God.
There are days, sometimes too many to count, when I have not
made time to spend with you, God, and I feel your sorrow. There are other times
when I short change us both by trying to spend time with you when I am on the
run. I am even guilty of sending up arrow prayers at the spur of the moment
before we have met and had fellowship.
I have studied your word and know that you desire to have a
relationship with me. And I know that by my putting off time alone with you, I
cheat both of us. Instead of giving you the First Fruits of the day, I fear
that sometimes, I give you the leftovers, and I feel sorrow. Yet, in my sorrow,
I feel yours, which is not like the sadness that falls upon us mortals, and
then is lifted in the next few moments or hours when our mind is engaged in
something else, another drama or perhaps another joy. Knowing Scripture, as I do,
I fear that your sorrow continues as I, your beloved child, keep myself away
from you.
Even knowing you desire to have a daily – moment by moment –
relationship with me, I keep putting other demands in front of me and avoid making
time to develop a deeper relationship with you, I watch as my need to give into
the ‘the tyranny of the urgent’ causes me to drift farther and father away
until I cannot even see you in my life. Sadly, by allowing the things of this
word to become my only focus, I become a person doing instead of a human being,
and I lose sight of you; the creator God the one who called me into existence
and the one for whom I was created. Because of this there are times, I feel as
if I am a helium balloon floating on the winds of chance, and even in these
situations, and I hear you calling to me. For a brief moment, I am reminded of your
overarching love, care and concern for me. It is during these times of personal
wanderings that I realize that though I have wandered away from you, I must return
to you while my heart and soul still respond to your call. And it is in this
process of returning that you teach me again how to reorder my priorities and
put our relationship first in my life. Then, returning, I am placed under the
shelter of your wings, and I rejoice for only in you do I experience true and
abiding love, faith and commitment because these attributes of yours will
continue even though heaven and earth are no more!
Looking back from the shelter of your wings to that distant
and troubled world that had been calling me, I realize anew that if your Scriptures
had not reach me when I was far away from you, I may have become as one who has
heard, received, and believed the gospel, but whose roots were not firm. Yet, looking
back at my situation from the comfort and security of your nurturing care, I
realize that even in your sorrow your mercy is extended to me. I rejoice in the
realization that you have again drawn me back to you! Yet in this joy I am
aware that no mother, father, sister, brother or child, no one can understand
the grief that I cause you. And I, I only know the grief I cause myself when I allow
the word and all it deceptions to pull my focus to those things that will not
last and in so doing find that my feet are plants on slippery sand rather than
on the firm salvation that only you afford!
Please God I pray, help me stay close to you today, this
very minute that I may replace the ‘tyranny of the urgent’ with a commitment to
make my relationship with you the Alpha and Omega of my existence! Remind me to
begin and end each and every day with you and allow my mind to be drawn to you
again and again through out the day for; succor, council, wisdom and
encouragement. For in this world there
is no one like you; who graciously offers these resources to me from a
wellspring of blessings and guidance that you have! Ah, to begin and end of
each and every day with you! What joy!
Because of your great love for me, because of my great need
for you, I ask of you Father that Sunset and Sunrise you will call me to you to
meditate on your Word. Draw me close to you by the renewing of my mind so that I may
be transformed though spending time with you and in your Scriptures. Amen.
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