Tag: God
Beyond Words
Haunted by Ghosts of Regret?
Do the ghosts of past regret haunt you with the words “If only?”
When Daylight Savings Time ended last Sunday, the sun rose at 6:35 a.m. instead of 7:35 a.m. because I set back my clocks by one hour.
If only I could change my past that easily by switching back the hands of time.
Hindsight has taught me many lessons, made me wiser.
Even so, I’d like to go back and change poor decisions. Sometimes, I wonder how life would be now if I’d made different choices.
There are also things I wish I’d done…..
For two years, I promised myself I’d visit an elderly friend. But she lived “so far away” and “life was busy.” By the time I went to her home, she had passed away.
IF only I had known….
Regret is difficult to avoid…
If only I had taken a different path,
If only I had made better choices,
If only God hadn’t allowed that circumstance,
If only I had known then, what I know now.
But living with “what might have been” paralyzes me.
Before Paul was an apostle of Christ, he persecuted Christians. The memory of watching Stephen being stoned to death must have made Paul cry, “If only I had known Christ then, I would have ….”
Paul experienced remorse over his actions: “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?”
But he received the peace of God. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord…There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Read Romans 7:15-8:1)
“If only” didn’t hold Paul captive to the past.
Instead, he believed that he was loved by God, saved by grace, and forgiven.
And those facts enabled Paul to say, “…forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Read Philippians 3:8-14)
Like Paul, we get to choose where our mind dwells.
“Whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, good repute, excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things…..and the God of peace shall be with you.” (Philippians 4:8-9)
The only “if only” anyone should regret……is not knowing…..the God of peace.
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What Kinds of People Do You See?
I was in the Ladies Room at the San Francisco Airport when I heard someone ask, “Are you okay?”
A woman in her sixties was sprawled on the floor in a bathroom stall. She’d slipped on a puddle, twisted her knee, and smacked her cheek on the commode.
The person left who asked, “Are you okay?”
So I helped the woman stand up. She was dazed and held her bruised cheek.
“Are you lightheaded? Are you traveling alone?”
“I’m alone,” she whimpered. “And I’m worried about my knee.”
I gave her a wet paper towel for her cheek, and held her arm as she limped to her nearby departure gate. When I told the gate attendant what happened and asked for ice to put on the woman’s cheek, she took immediate action. She filed a report, and sent for a paramedic to look at the woman’s knee.
I walked away, glad I had taken the time to assist her.
While I waited for my plane to depart, I smiled at strangers and exchanged pleasantries.
When I sat down in the plane, the woman next to me talked nonstop about her life including some painful memories. Even the flight attendant talked with us, telling us about her parents who had escaped Phnom Penh, Cambodia in the 1970’s.
As our plane landed in Texas, I thought about the people I’d met that day.
Why was I surprised?
When I’d driven to the airport that morning, I’d prayed for God to give me His eyes and ears. I wanted to be available to people rather than isolate myself in a book. Wasn’t it just like the Lord to answer my prayers beyond my expectations.
What and Who am I missing when I rush through my days in my self-absorbed world?
Who knew there were so many friendly people in the world?
Which made me think of this story:
An old man sat outside the walls of a great city. When travelers approached, they would ask the old man, “What kinds of people live in this city?”
The old man would answer, “What kind of people live in the place where you came from?”
If the travelers answered, “Only bad people live in the place where we came from,” the old man would reply, “Continue on; you will find only bad people here.”
But if the travelers answered, “Good people live in the place where we came from,” then the old man would say, “Enter, for here too, you will find only good people.” ~Author unknown
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What About My Needs?
There are Naked Ladies in my garden, soaking up the August sunshine.
When I see them, I think of the Lord’s Prayer.
Naked Ladies are also called Belladonna Lilies. They earned their nickname due to their leafless long stems that produce funnel-shaped flowers in late summer.
What do Naked Ladies have to do with the Lord’s Prayer?
Yesterday while I dug shallow holes for these plants, it occurred to me …
Plants like my Naked Ladies need four things to survive: water, oxygen, sunlight, soil.
According to the Lord’s Prayer, these are my needs.
Bread
Forgiveness
Deliverance
What about Marriage? Children? Success? Wealth?
Sorry, these aren’t mentioned in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13).
This passage, simple enough for a child to memorize, packs a deadly punch….to my egocentric heart.
Even the words preceding this prayer humbles me.
“Lord, teach us to pray.”
The disciples didn’t assume, they wanted to know how to pray.
“Lord, teach us to pray” …. is a prayer in itself.
A challenge for me to come before God with a teachable heart and one request. “Lord, teach me to pray.”
I don’t want my prayers to resemble a laundry list of perceived needs for myself and others.
I don’t want to be a taskmaster, telling God what I want fixed, finished, and furnished. And make it quick.
Even when I praise God’s attributes, thank Him for my blessings, and ask Him to forgive my sins….
There is still too much of me, and too little of God in my prayers.
HE should have turned me into a pillar of salt long ago.
But instead, the Lord teaches me to pray while I kneel in the dirt, head bowed beneath a canopy of oak trees…an earthly sanctuary where His Prayer convicts and fills my heart anew.
“Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed by YOUR Name
YOUR kingdom come,
YOUR will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Hmm, this prayer is all about God. What about ME: My reputation, My life, My will? My needs?
“Give us today, our daily Bread
And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
Bread
Forgiveness
Deliverance
There are other prayers in the Bible, other needs addressed.
But, when the disciples said, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
Our Father was the prayer Jesus taught them.
I need to pray likewise, and be thankful when God meets these needs!
Even In This 