Reminiscing

Looking back and looking forward in one's life are different when living in God's grace compared to not living with the complete feeling that God is truly caring for everything that a person is.

A paused mind (not easy in today's 24/7 locked-in world), maybe when slightly drunk, can lead people to pine for an earlier time before their current troubles began. Yet, I perceive that experience in reverse. God shows us his love as we experience difficulties. "These days" are in fact the days that will try our patience the most, and days past were only worse than today since a smaller life experience of the past meant that one's understanding of grace was smaller.

When I reminisce I really end up imagining how good it soon will be, once our frail bodies are made whole. We have every blessing we could ever need, now. Only our physical weakness is holding us back. That will end very soon.

The Chase

I ran after a kid a school that was up to no good and I felt the need to talk to him. As I approached and asked to talk, he bolted, and so did I. Two days later my legs are still sore, even though the race only lasted about 40 yards.

Anyway, it was a somewhat threatening experience for me, in hindsight. He could have been a lot more dangerous with me personally than he was. Why did I not want him to get away? I think that I just didn't want to have him get away that easily, and I am pretty fast for a short burst, and I was pretty sure that I could keep up if I didn't have a lot of stamina either. Still, what did I think that I was accomplishing?

I'm still mystified. Truly, only God knows. And for now, that is all who needs to know.

My wife thinks that the incident shows how difficult my job is in general and that I should consider something less stressful. Not an unworthy idea. And God does use events in just that way. But life with God is easy to live correctly, not difficult to figure out. Choices and events may seem small and decisions unrelated, but it is all being "worked together for good" by God.

Fortunately so.

Prayer before events

Many people I know and associate with pray before events. Are we about to eat and entree? Let's pray. (snacks don't usually rise to "prayer-worthiness"). Are we going on a longer trip than is typical? Let's pray. Is there a large purchase being made? Pray. Is the biggest game of the season about to start? Pray twice.

We are to be in a constant state of prayer according to the apostle Paul (the one from Tarsus). So praying in the above instances is a good behavior. The contents of the prayers is my issue in this writing.

I hear from Paul's prayers and writings:

• reminders to each other about the wonder of God's grace
• Prayers of thanksgiving
• clarifications about how his Christian qualifications differ from his other brothers in Christ

I don't hear requests he be removed from his (unlawful even by Roman standards) imprisonment. Nor are there prayers that God will manipulate the world in some way for his or for anyone else's benefit.

However, those are just the kinds of prayers I have heard for 40 years in my Christian experience. I have actively participated in them myself. But no more.

Prayers for God to manipulate the world are flawed in multiple ways. If you disagree with my above evaluation of the nature of Paul's prayers, then I will present an error in logic in such requests. For while it is written more than once that we are to present or requests and supplications before God, this is of limited value, since it is more about us (there is the limitation) than about God.

"God, Steve is very sick..."
God is in charge of my life as a Christian. Nothing escapes him. So prayers to remind God of the details of our current predicament imply God is really not paying attention, which isn't true.

"God, we ask that there be no injuries during this game..."
This is a big area. God loves us. Either completely and perfectly or with perfections. This prayer implies that God can make mistakes and let bad things happen to his children. Or worse that God causes harm to punish his children. Or even worse, just because he can he takes a big stick to his children every so often to get their attention.

These go from the wrong to the scary to the completely, disappointingly misinformed.

First, there is bad in the world. God never said that the holy spirit living in us would prevent bad things from happening. If no bad things will befall us, why did all manner of bad things befall Jesus? So bad things happen. and will happen to us. And while I believe that in Phillipians Paul implies that in general FEWER bad things happen to Christians (hey, who can really tell, since even one bad things can feel like too many) it is precisely at that moment the the holy spirit's companionship is most crucial. And this is a big point: our lives are completely taken care of. Our every moment is known by God and he isn't one bit worried about anything that is coming at us. And remember that we are here on earth for what will amount to a millisecond when compared to the eternal perfection of heaven.

Still that millisecond can seem pretty bad. Death, loss, failure, delays, embarrassment, dreams deferred, pain, inability to remember who you are. This is all a part of life. The holy spirit will and can and does explain on an individual basis just what aspect of comfort is most needed at that moment.

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God is caring. Not bothered by our day to day problems - of course, he is actively working us through each of our crisis.

Our prayers can thank God for his companionship and for the reminders that he is moving us through our lives deftly working with our limitations to show us his love. No need to really request anything, since you already have God living in you as a believer.