From Heaven to My Heart

Randomly selected prayers. 3/12/85 Searching for ways to speak about God, to describe God so that I know to whom I belong, has been part of my prayer life long before I discovered that God is more than any name we can give God. When we are in the process of becoming a friend of someone we have just met and liked, we are interested in who they are and what they have done and what they like. So it is when we are in the process of becoming friends with God. Dear Lord, how great Thou art! How great Thou art! You are so Wonderful, so full of grace and mercy, patient and slow to anger. How great Thou art. You are God almighty. (Gen 17:1) You are the Everlasting God. (Gen 21:33) You are merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. (Ex 34:6) You are the living God. (Josh 3:10) You are righteous. (Jn 17:25) You are steadfast and encouraging. (Rom 15:5) You are the God of hope. (Rom 15:13) You are faithful. (1 Cor 1:15) You are merciful and comforting. (2 Cor 1:3) You are love. (I Jn 4:8) The Bible is not the only place to learn about God. However, it is the place where we learn what the parameters are. It is the sieve for sorting out what are appropriate names and attributes to use to describe her. In other words, we as Christians cannot just ride off in all directions and name God whatever suits us. When we find a new name for God or a word with which to describe God it should fit the litmus test provided by Love. If it describes love and loving care it is appropriate. By the way Something that stayed the same and is still the same today is the way I praised God in my prayers and the way I marveled at her care for us. Dear Lord my God, how great Thou art! How great Thou art! You are so high and lifted up above us! You are so great and so mighty and powerful! You are Creator and Healer of the universe! All praise and honor and glory to be Your name forever and ever. Thank You for caring so much about what happens to us here and now; what happens to each of us! What a difference there is between thinking of God only as on a throne far above us and thinking of God as One who is involved in each of our lives. Both views—transcendence and immanence expressed in this prayer—are characteristics of God that need to be recognized and celebrated. As contradictory as they seem, they are part of the mystery of God. Either one taken by itself is a distortion of what God has revealed of herself. We cannot help but fall down and worship at the foot of the throne of God who has created this magnificent, intricate universe! But if that is the only view we have, then God on his throne is distant from us. On the other hand, if we concentrate on God active in our lives, we are in danger of reducing him to an errand boy who exists to meet our every need and want. To keep a healthy spiritual life, we need to worship and fully enjoy both God transcendent and God immanent. 1/28/87 Dear Lord, my God and Father, You take such good care of me! You meet my physical needs. You keep me safe. You guide and direct me. You lead me in pleasant paths. You send me among pleasant people. You dwell with me and let me feel Your Presence even when I have not taken time to be with You alone. It had been three days since I had written my prayers in time set aside for God, so I was feeling this absence deeply in my spirit. Dear Lord, I am sorry that I haven’t taken time to sit with You and write my prayers. You fill my heart so frequently during the day and that is wonderful and I thank You and praise You! But I know I need to keep this special time as well. Guide me to growth through this special time. My spiritual life can only grow at the speed with which I let it. Not if I am “too busy,” or if I am too tired. “Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you! (Is. 30:18) Thank You, Lord, for waiting for me. Please never give up on me! Please! My image of Jesus waiting in the living room for me to come and sit down to talk was certainly in keeping with this passage from Isaiah. God is waiting for us. God wants our company. After my mother passed away, I went to visit my dad a couple of times a year. I took the AMTRAC train from Chicago to Hastings, Nebraska where my dad and my sister, Sharon, lived. The train ride was always a precious time because I was alone. I avoided conversation with anyone as much as I could. I realize I probably missed many good opportunities for interesting conversation, but I needed and wanted the time for renewal. In effect, I pampered myself. I usually had a seat by myself and I read books and listened to Mozart as the train sped across the fields of Illinois and Iowa and into Nebraska. Those train rides were refreshing and strengthening times for me. By the time I got to Hastings, I was calmed from my daily life at home and ready for time with Daddy and Sharon. One morning in particular, he was up and out so I spent some time writing. The kitchen table was the best place for that. We always used the back door at our house so he had to pass by me in his comings and goings. I wanted him to sit down and talk with me but he was too busy. He would pass through the kitchen and we would exchange a few words, usually because I asked him a question. Then he would be out the door. I realize he may have thought that he was interrupting whatever it was I was doing or maybe what he was doing was of great importance. There is an incredible similarity between what was happening with Daddy and me with what happens between God and us. God wants so much to have us sit down and spend time with her, just like I wanted Daddy to sit down and talk with me. Instead, we rush in and out of conversations with God as Daddy did with me that day and as I too often do with Norm. 9/1/89 Dear Lord, my God, my dearest friend and companion. I feel like crying this morning. I am so tired and my body hurts so much! Yesterday I drove to Hattie’s, worked in my office, cleaned the small bathroom, played for choir practice, cleaned the lower kitchen cabinets, and made tomato juice and fixed one of the dining room chairs. I guess it is no wonder that I am tired, but that makes me want to cry. I feel like I need to work that hard to keep up with things. But I sure have to get over that. Prayers of this nature constantly recur in my prayer journals, although the anguish and anxiety have lessened. Now, in retirement, I am finally learning that not everything has to be done right now and much of what I used to do doesn’t have to be done at all. I used to clean my twenty-four hundred foot raised ranch-style house every week. Now I clean my little fourteen hundred square foot house a room a day, once in awhile. There was always a counterbalance to the prayers of exhaustion, such as this one which I wrote shortly after the one above. You have made my life so good. You have given me such a large measure of peace and satisfaction that things like that don’t bother me nearly as much or eat at me like they used to. I praise You and thank You and ask You to continue to mold me and make me! How great You are! I love the things that You have called me to do that can rightly take precedence over the myriad details of housekeeping. Thank You that You have so gifted me—take me and use me. 4/20/09 A pile of tinder waiting for a spark. That is the best way I can describe the women at the retreat. They were ready to take fire and they did. It was so amazing! So wonderful! So incredible! It had happened once before at a retreat for Presbyterian women and it happened again at a retreat for Episcopalian Christian educators who were all women. The topic was using feminine language for God. The language and reasons for using it were new to most of the women and they were ready and waiting for it even though they couldn’t have expressed their need before they heard of the p