This is My Father’s World
Emily and Kyong Song
This is the first song I thought of when I saw this week’s theme. We are able to wait with hope because even in the midst of uncertainty, God is always revealing himself to us.
Lyrics:
This is my Father’s worldAnd to my listening ears
All nature sings, and ‘round me rings
The music of the spheres
This is my Father’s world
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas
His hands the wonders wrought
This is my Father’s world
The birds their carols raise
The morning light, the lily white
Declare their Maker’s praise
This is my Father’s world
He shines in all that’s fair
In the rustling grass, I hear him pass
He speaks to me everywhere
This is my Father’s world
O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong
God is the ruler yet
This is my Father’s world
Why should my heart be sad
The Lord is King, let the heavens ring
God reigns let the earth be glad
My Blueberry Bushes
Theresa Garnett
I planted a few blueberry bushes in my garden a year ago. I knew I would have to pinch off any flowers they produced that first summer, so all of their energy would go toward becoming well established. It wasn’t hard to pinch them off because I had already known I would need to do it.
But in the winter, the rabbits mowed my bushes down. Not much of last year’s growth remained when I checked on them as the snow melted.
It was so much harder to pinch the new flower buds off this week, knowing I was choosing to wait another year for fruit. I hope it will be worth it. There are no guarantees in gardening, but my plan to put chicken wire around them next winter is helping me feel hopeful while I settle in for another long wait.
Waiting for the Cookies I Made
Mary Garnett
Shortbread Cookie Dough and My Family’s Oven
Waiting in Prayer
Ellen Jensen
Do you ever feel as though you get a message like this one when you don’t seem to be getting an answer to prayer:
Thank you for contacting Me in your time of need. All prayers are answered in the order received. If you experience a delay, please do not hang up, but continue to hold. I understand that your prayer is urgent and it is very important to me. Thank you for praying and please continue to read your Bible.
Somehow the numerous explanations that theologians have written about Waiting on the Lord don’t feel very comforting. All those bits about character development and growth. Bah!
Many a parent has had a child begging them for a bike, the chance to go to a special outing the upcoming summer, or the worst and the most dreaded request of all: an unrelenting plea for a puppy. So the fun begins.
“If I can’t have a puppy because I am too young, when will I be old enough?” So-and-so got a puppy and they are a whole grade younger than I am.”
“I will come straight home after school and walk him everyday.”
“You know, it’s a very good idea for kids to have puppies because then they learn responsibility.”
The parents’ replies vary:
The issue is closed. Don’t bug me again about it.
Ask your mom about it.
We’ll see.
You’re living on another planet if you think we are getting a dog.
So how do parent and child get beyond the impasse of not reaching a satisfactory agreement for both? How do I in my relationship with God “Work out” my prayer requests with Him when it seems I am “on hold”?
The only sane answer I can come up with is: to keep praying.
Not in a whining, begging sort of way, but in a way that says I am willing to be willing to accept whatever answer, even if I don’t understand. The benefit we have in prayer is knowing that God is not an ordinary parent, unlike our flawed natural parents. He is for me; we are on the same team. He wants only good things for me. He is wise and can’t be fooled. He can make things happen. He knows all contingency plans, from A-Z and beyond. And best of all, He loves me and is working out the answer WITH me, not in spite of me. There have been instances in scripture where God is said to have changed His mind in response to a single human prayer—a conundrum theologically, but it has happened, and does happen. The challenge for me is to not “hang up” and end the dialogue. He is listening. I am not stuck in an endless queue in the 7th circle of hell. In the exchange of prayer and the Word, He remains faithful on His end of the line. He hears me. The comfort is not in the answer to prayer. The comfort is that my Jesus and I can talk about it, for however long is needed, and until we are of one mind.
“And this is the confidence that we have before Him: If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we already possess what we have asked of Him.” 1 John 5
Sleep
Molly Riley
These strange days we’re contemplating obituaries for the things we love:a table packed elbow to elbow,
the crack of a baseball,
bells at the church,
a handshake,
proximity.
Are these things dead or are they asleep?
I was thinking how they laughed when he told them all the little girl needed to hear was “arise!”
And I can see laughter on their faces to think, after four days, of Lazarus sleeping all that time.
They were sure these were stories about death.
They were ready to write the obits.
We want our laughter to be of another kind,
and our own obituaries too,
because we wait and we look, you know the line,
“for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.”
Waiting
Liz Stewart
waiting can be…repetition, feeling tied to a center, circular, we can be resigned to it, hopeful….
0 Comments