Good and warm Monday morning! Oops, this morning's broadcast has been preempted by a paw. A small paw attached to a beast that wants some attention. Don't you just wish that whenever you want some attention from God that you could just reach out a little hand and grab him? I find it interesting that when we want God's full attention, we put our hands together in prayer. We don't try to grab, that is disrespectful. We expect it of the dumb beasts, but when we come before God we bow the head and put the hands together. Of course that is all rather short sighted, don't you think? God is not looking away from us just because we aren't kneeling with our hands together and our heads bowed. God is not haughty in the way of human rulers demanding certain positions from their supplicants. We can pray at any time and in fact are told to pray constantly. We don't have to reach out a hand when we can simply lift up our hearts.
This morning at breakfast I read one of Asaph's psalms. In this psalm, Asaph once again hit it right on the button. The questions we often ask during an anxious night are already answered in the Bible, but we ask them in our fear. We know in our minds that God has not gone away and that He will act in his own perfect time. However, our hearts cry out in distress and sometimes we ask those questions of God that He has already answered in His Word. Thousands of years ago, Asaph did the same thing and recorded it in a psalm for us to read. Actually he and his descendants wrote down many psalms and I am glad that we have them to read today. Knowing that another person way back in what we call ancient times had similar thoughts and asked the same questions of God that we do during times of fear is a great comfort to me. Why is that?
In reading the psalm, I don't see that God gave a verbal answer to Asaph right there during his anxious night. Yet later in the psalm, Asaph is praising the Lord. What changed his mind? He resolved to remember God's deeds of old. We can do the same thing. We have an entire Bible full of the wonderful and glorious deeds of God: including the birth and life of His own Son. We can read where others asked God tough and even what seems in the light of the day to be disrespectful questions. Where have you gone, Lord? That might seem to be disrespectful in the calm morning with a good breakfast in the belly, but during the cold night while the wind is howling and the shadows are jumping, we might just burst out with that very question. In that moment of stress we are not disrespectful, we earnestly want to hear from the Lord in that moment!
Don't be afraid to ask God whatever comes to your mind in a moment of stress. It is never wrong to pour out our hearts to God. In fact, maybe we should be doing that more often!
Bucky
No comments:
Post a Comment