I baked cookies today for the first time in awhile. Baking is also thinking time and it takes time to bake dozens of cookies. We have questions about God and prayer. How is God answering those prayers? Has he forgotten about you or is His answer different than you planned for. Today I also mailed two get well cards and one sympathy card. Each card has a story but as I have prayed and continued to pray, each prayer suggests an action. God can do anything and I can send cards.
The next thing I read this week is about privacy. There are three things that Jesus said should be done in private – fasting, praying, and giving. Think about it and you can find the verses in the gospels.
So Mother Teresa was asked about how to live a holy life and she answered (my paraphrase), spend an hour with God each day and do what is right. She is remembered as someone who was faithful to God so her opinion has great value to me. I think I come up short some days but I also believe that His grace is sufficient for me. Speaking of sufficient, the memory verse for our ninth class of ‘Spiritual Multiplication’ is 2 Cor 3:5-6, and reads, “Not that we are SUFFICIENT in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us but our SUFFICIENCY is from God, Who has made us SUFFICIENT to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life”. It is not how holy I live but how holy He is.
I don’t want to write about this but here it goes. There is something that dogs do better than us. I’m surprised at how many people prefer big dogs since they are full of affection but make big messes. On my many walks in the neighborhood, I see many owners pause, often, for the leg lifting. The aim is instinct and the owner picks up the messes. I see a few comparisons here. We have messy lives but God helps us. Our aim at taking care of business misses the mark.
The Matrix is real. That is an action film about a frightening future. That film world is an allusion. What they think is real is false. They don’t really live. I’m proposing it is an allegory for this physical world which is not all there is. It is real enough but also a means to an end. I know a very few people who don’t wonder what is next.
Another thing on this day of thinking and baking – a quote from John Bunyan, “The truths that I know best I have learned on my knees. I never know a thing well, till it is burned into my heart by prayer”.
Finally, Philip De Courcy, this week called prayer the “slender nerve that moves the hand of God”.