This morning when I opened my phone and looked at the verse of the day, it was two words. Just two. I thought that could not be right, so I looked it up in context. Sure enough, that verse is two words. “Pray constantly.” It isn’t even a whole sentence, although it could be. It’s in the middle of a sentence. In the middle of a chapter of very practical advice for everyday living. But my mind kept coming back to these two words. Pray constantly.
When you hear “pray constantly,” who comes to mind? Nuns and monks? Pastors and other church leaders? The lady who sits on her porch rocking all afternoon? The grandpa who mutters to himself while he sleeps? The child who stares into space with a smile on his face?
What kind of words do you think of when you hear “pray”? Our father who art in heaven? Now I lay me day to sleep? Good food, good meat, good gosh let’s eat? Pleas for healing? Wordless tears? A list of things you’re thankful for? Begging for people to act right?
What postures do you see in your mind when you think of people praying? Kneeling? Standing at a pulpit? Sitting at a table and holding hands? Beside a hospital bed? Standing and gazing in awe at a waterfall?
All of these are possible. And oh so many more.
Other than alone, I’ve done most of my praying in a classroom of teenagers. You never know what they’re going to say or ask. I wanted to stay calm (that is, not get sent home myself), be honest, and lead them closer to the Lord. I had to talk with God quietly all day long, between snippets of South Carolina history, chemistry, and the tearful “she said that he said that I’m ______.”
How can we pray constantly? Think of how often you talk with your best friends. What do you talk about? Talk about those things with him. What comes out of our mouths spills from our hearts, and he already knows your heart so it’s doubtful you’ll surprise him. And if you think it might be offensive, two things. One, he’s probably heard it before. Two, maybe you should reconsider your thoughts?
My favorite prayers are more like conversations. We share updates on things we’ve prayed about before. We talk about what’s happening in our lives. We spend some moments thanking God. One or more of us will have a specific sin we need to confess. Often it’s attitudes or words we’ve said that didn’t need to be said. Then one of us remembers more news about a family member or friend and we chat. Then one of us starts speaking directly to God again, lifting a praise or a petition. Sometimes one of us will get an insight into a problem the other has and we’ll share that. Having a conversation that includes speaking directly to God and some time of quiet to hear that still, small voice is a meaningful way to pray.
However you communicate with God, may it move toward being constant. As you clean the kitchen, you can thank him for food to eat, electricity to prepare the food, and plumbing that brings clean water right into your home. You can pray for people who don’t have access to fresh water, even to drink. You can lift up the people who drill wells and share the gospel. Pray for all those who live the gospel …. mechanics who are honest, door dash drivers who deliver food, pharmacy employees who medicine, teachers who love on their students, pastors, IT personnel who keep the internet going, linemen who keep electricity coming to your home, first responders, child care personnel, warehouse workers, factory workers, the list goes on and on.
Take heart, Teacher, and be encouraged. You will be appreciated.
Public school, private school, charter school, home school. College prep, unschooling, classical education, laid-back eclectic. Academics, sports, fine arts, technical skills. Parenting.
Tie a shoelace. Learn to add. Hit a home run. Play Mozart. Give a speech. Ace the ACT. Be kind to others.
Prepare a meal. Milk a goat. Change a tire. Serve food with flair. Repair equipment. Lead well. Help others heal.
Teacher, whatever your official title, you enable others to become who they are meant to be.
Teacher Appreciation Day may bring you many gifts. It may bring none. But there are times when current or former students think kindly of you and know without a doubt that you are a part of their success stories.
Perhaps it will be on Graduation Day. Maybe it will be the day your student becomes a teacher. It may be the day your pet died; the week you are kicked and spit upon; the day you stood up for the underling; following weeks of encouragement to struggling learners; your patient, consistent correction of bad behaviors; your flair for presenting history or making math class fun.
If it is not today, Teacher, be patient. Appreciation is there, and one day you will see it. And it will be so sweet.
Now Always Forever Never Tomorrow Yesterday Today Just give me a sec In a minute Sometime
Time is such a weird thing. An afternoon spent laughing with friends is gone in the blink of an eye. An hour spent staring at a math test when you can’t remember any of the formulas seems like eternity. To the grandparent who wants to give gifts to over twenty grandchildren, you turn around twice and it’s Christmas again. Meanwhile, to those children, from Christmas to a birthday is for-ev-er!
Last night we had a little talk about how to get children to understand that the choices they make now are setting a pattern for the rest of their lives but the consequences are so much greater as you get older. Well, for this particular child we now need to be prepared for questions like “Do you have enough money to pay the mortgage?” “Can we pay the light bill this month?” “Are you sure we can buy enough food?” “Have you done anything to go to jail?” “What’s so bad about losing a job? You did and you’re okay.” I’m thankful he has learned to look at a calendar and wait for days and weeks until an event. He counts hours or minutes with exactness. He counts months until his birthday. But when it comes to things other than a specific event, then and now are not easily distinguished. At that moment in the conversation, I had a lightbulb moment. Some children, and I realized this morning a number of adults I know, live in eternity. Everything is now and everything is always. That trait is maddening to those of us who live by a calendar and a clock, even if I do round times to the nearest quarter hour, which in turn drives my be-precise!-minded friends crazy.
I awoke thinking about that concept. Everything is now. Everything is forever. I hope that on the other side of this life I have a new brain, because this one can not quite grasp the idea of life without time that steadily moves forward. In the meantime, perhaps I will be a little more gracious to those who seem to have no sense of time, and more thankful for those who do live by a clock and a calendar.
If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. – Romans 12:18 CSB
“Stick your finger into the soil. Can you feel any moisture?”
“Oh yeah! Just a little bit of it is dry. Then it’s damp.”
“Well, you need to wait until the soil is dry almost to the bottom of the pot and then water it.”
“Oh. Okay. But why?”
Years ago in what seems a different lifetime, a wholesale supplier told us that the perfect time to water a poinsettia is fifteen seconds before wilt. So … when is that? You can’t see wilt until it happens. If you have tables full of plants, you can wait until a few near the edges wilt, and then most of them are just before wilt, and a few may be watered a little sooner than they really need it, but they will be okay. But if you have just a few plants around your home, how do you tell? And why does it matter?
One way to tell is to check the soil mixture. Stick your finger in it and see if it’s wet or not. There are also cute little glass bulb thingeys that somehow let water out only when the soil is dry. There are fancy soil moisture sensors that will tell you when to water.
Why is it important? If you have a plant or two that you will keep indoors, it may not really matter. But if the plant is outside in the wind or will later be transplanted to the outdoors, it needs roots. It needs lots of roots. It needs deep roots. Plants are efficient. They will grow roots only long enough to reach water and nutrients. If water is nearby, the roots stay short. When the winds come, the plant is easily blown over. If the roots have to reach deep for water, they will. Deeper roots give the plant more stability.
Deep spiritual roots give us more stability, too. Often we want to go to a retreat and grow our spiritual lives during the celebrations of life. Celebrations and mountaintop retreats are nice, but much more often our faith is grown during the troubles of life. We usually pray for our troubles to be fixed or to simply be poofed away as if by magic. Troubles can be our allies. They show us who are supportive friends are. They give us an opportunity to use the skills we have learned. And they teach us new skills that will help us later on. Perhaps, instead of praying, “Fix this, God. And do it NOW!” we should consider praying, “God, I don’t like this. You know I don’t like it. You know this is hard. Please help me see what I need to learn. I know I am learning to depend more on you instead of my own abilities and resources. May this experience help me to become closer to the person you want me to be.”
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. – Romans 5:3-5 ESV
And then one day, one moment, the questions change.
Where am I now? Where am I to go?
How will I get there?
What do I need to learn to get there?
Who should I be following?
When will I start?
We are here – at this time and in this place.
Where we go as a community or nation is dependent on a lot of things beyond any one person’s control. Where each of us goes individually depends largely on the decisions we make as individuals.
We will depend on our faithful support group, and our God.
We will probably learn that we need to learn more than we can, but we will do the best with what we know at any given time. We will seek to increase our knowledge and our wisdom.
We must act in a way that reflects who our mouths say we are following.
My mind has been wondering around in hyper drive lately. This morning I wandered outside to sit in the sun. Sunshine, no breeze, and 45 degrees is pretty nice, especially with everyone else in the household asleep and no traffic on the road.
I have been wondering about the fear and uncertainty in our world. They are consuming people like a prairie wildfire at the end of a year of drought. What are we so stinking afraid of? The unknown. The uncertainty.
I recently heard the remark, “Why would anybody have a baby NOW?” I also heard that in the 70s – the cold war and the imminent threat of mutual annihilation kept a lot of people in a state of fear. In the early 21st century, students were shot at school. Unprecedented! No, it wasn’t’. Violence tore at schools and communities in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement.
That brings to mind the War Between the States. Imagine a family with several sons, and those adult sons choose different sides. As far as the deadliest attack on American soil, we did it to ourselves in that war. Can you imagine living in Virginia, or any other border state, in 1863 and finding out your first grandchild would be born in a few months? Will the doctor be available if something goes wrong? Will the town still be here? Will my home be mine or full of soldiers? Will we have any food or will the military have taken it all? There was no social security or food stamps or aid for families with children. It was you, your family, and your community.
Going a little farther back … what about the American Revolution? It’s easy now, close to 250 years later, to choose a side. But what if you were living then? What if you valued the steady income from sales of your products to England and your brother wanted to stop paying a government to tell him what he could and could not do?
Disease and pestilence have caused havoc in the past, too. Few people seem to remember H1N1 in 2009, when schools were shut down here and there, not nationwide but as needed, for months. That pandemic officially lasted sixteen months, from April, 2009 to August, 2010. HIV, Hong Kong flu, polio, the influenza outbreak of 1918, the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, locust swarms, Black Death, and a host of other things that I don’t even know about.
We think of being born into a royal family as a great thing, but was it really? An uprising that resulted in a new family leading the country could mean the death of everyone in the deposed family. That practice has gone on for millennia. Not much of a problem, perhaps, for the peasants, but for those on the edge of royalty I imagine any uprising brought quite a bit of stress from uncertainty.
So what?
This is what. Uncertainty is almost as old as humanity. Fear is as old as uncertainty. Today is not the first day ever of many people wondering what the future holds, with many hopeful and many fearful. Covid is not yet the deadliest disease ever. It may be the most uncertain day in your lifetime. It may be the deadliest disease in your lifetime, but before you are sure of that, do a little research.
I am sure of a few things. God did not start caring for people just yesterday. He has walked beside us and carried us from the beginning of time. He has been with his children for millennia. He is able to strengthen us through whatever the future holds. We hold to this hope because he has done so in the past. Bad stuff happens to people who follow God and people who don’t. Our happiness depends a little on what happens to us and around us and a whole lot on how we respond to those things. Our joy is found in resting in the arms of God.
May you have a joyful day, whatever your circumstances.
It rains on the just and the unjust. – Matthew 5:45
The joy of the Lord is your strength. – Nehemiah 8:10
Have you been around a toddler lately? A little child who is just learning to talk? What’s that? Who is that? What’s that? What’s this? Every breath seems to be a question. By the age of three the question is “Why?” No matter how many times you answer, their reply is “Why?” We begin life as curious creatures. It’s how we learn about our world and ourselves. Head, shoulders, knees, and toes, knees and toes. You sang that didn’t you? We learn what, who, where, and eventually when, how, and why.
Fast-forward to adulthood and we are still curious. What’s that noise?! Oh, it’s just a cat outside the door. Why in the world would anybody do that? What caused this cancer? Why are those flowers sometimes blue and sometimes pink – on the same bush? Is it supposed to rain this weekend? Will it really be that bad if I don’t take this medicine the doctor prescribed? How many times can one child spill a glass of milk – during one meal? Where do the memories go?
Sometimes the answers are easy to find, like the cat outside the door. Some are a bit exasperating, like how many times can the milk be spilled. Some are mostly fun, like what makes a hydrangea blue or pink. Some create conspiracy theories, like why would anybody do such a thing, whatever “that thing” happens to be.
I don’t know if curiosity has really killed many cats, but it has gotten some people into a bit of a pickle. You know as many of those stories as I do. Someone is curious enough to eavesdrop but not curious enough to clarify the details. The story gets passed along and changed and eventually gets back to the original speaker, who laughs hysterically at the ridiculousness of the story. Or, they get mad and create a scene and go try to straighten out all the details to everybody. Either way, it’s just a mess.
And then there’s the dig for facts kind of curiosity. Once upon a time you had to know people who knew things or read books to find information. Now, you just ask Siri or Alexa or Google. And if it’s on the internet, it has to be true, right? We all know that, sadly, that many things on the internet are not true. Distinguishing the facts from opinions can be difficult. Even more difficult is distinguishing true information from twisted information. New information compounds the difficulty of knowing what is “true.”
Just a few tidbits from history –
Bloodletting is a cure for disease. Tomatoes are poisonous.
Pewter, a popular material for drinking vessels, was made of lead. We used lead in water pipes and paint for our walls and furniture without causing any harm.
Thermometers were made of glass with mercury inside. Shoot, we safely played with little balls of mercury after the thermometer broke.
At points in history, these were considered true. We have learned differently. To believe that we at this point in history have a complete and thorough understanding of what is safe and what is not is to be dangerously arrogant. To settle on an opinion and be closed to new information on a topic – whether it is what fabrics to use for clothing or masks, what kinds of food to eat, whether to wear a mask or get a vaccine – is to risk looking as silly as those people you think were pitifully ignorant in years past.
During times of unrest or uncertainty, the Christian church often turns to 2 Chronicles 7:14. The intent of calling ourselves to repentance and into line with God’s purposes is a good idea. Many Christians have a solid understanding of the verse.
if – The promise that follows is contingent upon a condition being met.
my people who are called by my name – Not the whole world, just those who claim to belong to follow God’s teachings.
will humble themselves – While few of us will admit to being prideful, we are quick to pray for God to correct this sin in others.
and pray and seek my face – This is the easy part – telling God what we want Him to do.
and turn from their wicked ways – Again, we are quick to pray for all those others who claim to follow Christ but don’t agree with us. We need to sincerely seek God and listen to Him when he tells us what changes we need to make.
then – We like this part. Here comes the promise!
I will hear from heaven – what a joyous thought, God hears us.
and I will forgive their sin – We all need this.
and heal their land – Many want this. We want God to fix our nation, and all the people in it, so that we all get along.
We lose a lot of meaning when we take a verse and focus on just the verse. I am all for memorizing verses of scripture and no, I don’t think I could memorize the whole chapter. However, while we are memorizing, we need to become familiar with the context. King David is dead. Solomon has overseen the building of the temple. During the dedication of the temple, Solomon spoke to the people and then prayed to God. Fire came down from heaven and consumed sacrifices. God’s glory filled the temple so that the priests could not enter it. The leaders and people worshipped and offered more sacrifices. They feasted for a week and held a solemn ceremony on the eighth day. Solomon sent the people home. And then the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night and says that he is has heard Solomon’s prayer and chosen the temple as the place for his sacrifices. Then he says that when disasters strike, if his people will call out to him and repent, he will rescue them. I would be thinking, “Seriously?!?!!! After the way you just this week showed your glory and we worshiped you, you’re going to bring calamity on us??!!” Lest you think I exaggerate, let’s look at verse 13. By the way, there’s a comma at the end of verse 13; when we start at the beginning of verse 14, we are starting in the middle of a thought.
When –English translations are about 50/50 on whether this word should be “when” or “if.” Throughout scripture, the Hebrew word is an interjection that is most often translated, “behold” and is also translated as “so,” “through,” “when,” and “if.” Most of these words give the sense that God will cause the following things to happen.
I shut up heaven and there is no rain – Most of us have lived through times of drought. In this message to Solomon, God is saying He himself may shut the heavens. Even with our current water supply systems, if it doesn’t rain for months, we are in trouble.
or command the locusts to devour the land – They don’t eat the literal land – the dirt – but the vegetation on it. They leave behind no tender growth. No crops. No food.
or send pestilence among My people, – Plague, disease, and epidemic are more common words today.
To wrap it up in laymen’s words …. The nation of Israel held a great feast celebrating the dedication of the Temple. The worship was wonderful. After everyone had gone home, the Lord came to Solomon during the night. He told Solomon he was pleased and that if troubles came, serious nation-wide troubles, the people could turn back to God and his teachings and God would heal the land. When life is going great it is easy to get our eyes off Jesus and onto the things of the world. We get into a place where we seem able to care for ourselves without any divine strength or guidance. We have a good job, a safe home, a government that protects individual rights, a family we can visit, generally life is grand. And then troubles come. Then we realize that maybe, just maybe, we do need some supernatural guidance and wisdom and strength to navigate this life.
May 2 Chronicles 7:14, in context, still bring you comfort. Even when the food supply is disrupted and disease runs rampant, even when troubles surround us, we can sincerely turn to God and he will hear us and heal us. What a blessed promise.
These words can sting. They can cut straight through your heart. But, sometimes, they are just the push you need to begin healing. If we stay mired in our past hurts, it is really difficult to grow where we’re planted now, much less flourish in any area of life. Children can be great at moving on. They can have an intense argument over a toy or which game to play and five minutes later be involved in a completely different activity and having a great time. On the other hand, many adults avoid certain people because, “I just can NOT listen to that story AGAIN!” I’ve done it. You have probably done it. I have been that person telling the same sad story. Maybe you have, too.
Telling our story is part of our coping mechanism. Sharing our journey is part of how we heal. Some folks can tell it once – or not at all – and get on with life and be just fine. Others of us need to know that someone cares that we hurt. The event was painful then and the dull ache, with no warning whatsoever, will erupt in tears or anger or despair. We try to move on but the past keeps weighing us down.
But … is remembering all bad?
I had been in church for decades before I ever heard a pastor question the theology of the songs we sang. As it turns out, that’s a good thing to do. I also learned that for generations we have sang songs without knowing what we were saying. In the familiar “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” is the line “here I raise my Ebenezer.” What’s an Ebenezer? According to the Mirriam-Webster dictionary, it is a commemoration of a divine intervention. In I Samuel 6 and 7 is the story of a clash between the Israelites and Philistines. Just before the battle, God confused the Philistines and Israel was easily victorious. “Samuel then took a large stone and placed it between the towns of Mizpah and Jeshanah. He named it Ebenezer (which means “the stone of help”), for he said, “Up to this point the Lord has helped us!”” (I Samuel 7:12 NLT)
How has the Lord helped you up to this point? What is your Ebenezer? Traditionally it is a stone. Essentially it is something to remind you that God has helped you up to this point. Knowing God has helped you to this point is encouragement that he will help you through the next struggles, too. Your Ebenezer may be a journal you keep of prayer requests AND answers. It may be a ring, symbolizing the love and all the craziness and joy of sharing lives. It may be an urn of ashes on the mantle and you still get up, get dressed, and get through each day. It may be a picture of you on a trail because you can again walk up a hill. It may be a degree hanging on the wall. It may be a hand-drawn picture held to the refrigerator by a magnet.
If you don’t have one, find your Ebenezer. Forgetting is not the key to moving on. Remembering the joys and cherishing how God carried us through the trials will help us get through the uncertainties of the future.
