Days of Wandering

Monday July 29, 2013

You have kept record of my days of wandering.  You have stored my tears in your bottle and counted each of them.  When I pray, Lord God, my enemies will retreat, because I know for certain that you are with me.  I praise your promises!  I trust you and am not afraid.  No one can harm me.  I will keep my promises to you, my God, and bring you gifts.  You protected me from death and kept me from stumbling, so that I would please you and follow the light that leads to life.             Psalms 56:8 - 13 (CEV)

OK, so it’s Monday!  Just about enough said after a hard weekend.  Then you read the 56^th Psalm, because it’s next-up on the list, and you always read what’s next up on the list.  But did it have to be “days of wandering” and “tears in your bottle”.  Time to roll over and go back to sleep!

But you don’t just go back to sleep, because the question comes again and again:  Why doesn’t God DO something?  Wouldn’t that be better than just collecting the teardrops?  If God is so powerful and loves us so much, wouldn’t it make more sense to keep us from all pain and suffering?  Wouldn’t there be less depression and suicide if God just “zapped-away” all the madness, anger and greed in the world?  Collecting my tears just doesn’t seem like enough!

Ever felt like that?

Certainly you’ve wanted to buy God a calendar at times – praying for that child, husband, or neighbor has seemed like a full-time career. 

And sometimes it seems like our praying is only because we sense that if we can just trust enough, give enough, go to church enough….God will give us what we’ve been asking for.

Well…..ENOUGH!

We pray because He’s God (and we’re not!).

A church member gave me a newspaper article this past Sunday.  It’s about an atheist who “finds solace in prayer”.  In a story picked up from The Washington Post[i] the caption reads,

Sigfried Gold, an atheist, made a drawing almost 20 years ago of a female deity.  Gold says he takes comfort in praying daily to her.

If Mr. Gold is an atheist, by definition there is no God!  Contrary, oxymoron-ish and dumb hardly begin to explain this!

But are we any better when our prayers are simply tossing “spiritual coins” into the great vending machine in the sky, so we can get what we want?

Bottom line

Pray, drop your tears, pay your vows, trust in Him….not because it will make you healthy, wealthy and wise; do it because He’s God.

There….end of “Monday rant”.

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[i] In The News & Record, Tuesday, July 2, 2013