Praying through the Day

Praying is something I really struggle with--what to pray about, not just praying about myself, and just praying at all.  So this morning I decided to write down everything that I prayed about today.  Here's the list:
-various friends (feeling tired or depressed, working a difficult job)
-my brother
-the country and the world
-the debt crisis
-greed
-starvation
-AIDS and other sicknesses
-people living in a dictatorship
-seniors (of high school and college)
-a friend's sick sister
-people applying for internships and jobs
-that people may keep the right priorities
-a friend's friend with brain cancer, and his family and friends
-wisdom to know what God wants me to do today
-doctors
-everyone with cancer and their family and friends
-that people would come to know God
-the rich
-Iron Man (fans, creators)
-people who are confused
-Hungary
-restaurants
-Uzbekistan
-that everyone has a good weekend
-safety for people who go out tonight
-the people in Europe who are trying to deal with the sudden cold
-friends in Austria
-people who are suffering from war

Things I thanked God for:
-food
-music
-the sun
-rain
-people who come to meetings
-peanuts and peanut butter

Thanking God always gives me a feeling of amazing, completely inexplicable joy.

Doing this--writing down everything I prayed about, I mean--really helped me to focus on praying, especially if I ran across something that needed to be prayed for.  It was pretty amazing.  I feel like the focus on prayer and thanking God made my day much more joyful.

Weekly reflection

Looking back on the past week, I feel like I didn't focus enough on what God wants from me and spent way too much time and energy thinking and worrying about what was expected of me by the world and other people.  Now, I'm not denying that those things don't need to get done, because I'm not; they do need to get done, but part of the problem I had last week was that I didn't let God decide when and how these things needed to be done.  I tried to decide for myself, with the result that I didn't get all that much done, I used my time very badly, and I've ended this week feeling tired.

Mark 4:26-29

The farmer sows his seeds and waits for them to be ready to harvest, but he doesn't know how or why they grow.  For some reason this just really struck me.  Your mysterious ways--we don't or can't understand, whether we think we can or not.

Tiredness

I had a really hard time getting up this morning--I was really tired!  And You suddenly said: "Overcome it. Your body is temporary; your soul is eternal.  Your tiredness doesn't matter."

Forgetting

Today, I got very caught up in the routine and bustle of life, and forgot almost entirely about You, God.  Please forgive me, Lord, and help me to do better tomorrow.

Litter

Taking a walk today, I suddenly came across a stream.  In the stream was one single piece of litter.  For whatever reason, that piece of litter made me think of my own life, of all people--we were created to be perfect, to be beautiful.  But something went wrong.  Our lives are full of litter: litter that we put there, litter that we're too lazy to pick up, litter that we put there even though we know we shouldn't, litter that we don't even realize we're putting there, litter leftover from other people's influence on us.  Only God can help us clean up our personal landscape, the one that we cannot help but destroy because of our fallen nature.

Lord, please help me to clean up the litter in my own soul this week.

Gender Roles

I ran across a blog today about being a godly woman.  This blog said that women shouldn't go chasing after men, or even necessarily yearn after a certain man, because it isn't up to women anyway--men do the choosing.

I really wasn't sure what I thought of that.  I'm not inclined to think well of it, however.  I honestly found that a bit offensive.  Don't get me wrong, I absolutely don't think that women should just chase guys left and right or put their love life above God, but I still found that offensive.  I thought it was implying, a bit, that men can chase women because they're the ones who get to choose.  And what if a woman doesn't like the man who's chosen her?

OK, sorry.  That may have come across as rather hostile, and that's not what I meant.  I was interested to read this blog, because it is an issue I've been thinking about a decent amount lately.  For one thing, it seems that my friends are one by one getting boyfriends.  I'm not sure how I feel about that, and I'm not sure how I feel about the thought of having my own boyfriend.  The thought scares me, honestly, having never had one before--besides just the romantic/physical/emotional aspect of it, there's also the spiritual aspect, and I'm not sure my faith is deep enough right now that I could make the right choices when it came to who came first.  On the other hand, I would really like to meet that one special person and have a wonderful relationship with him.  But I'm not sure how many of my expectations/ideas about this come from the media, where everything is idealized.

Anyway, that wasn't entirely what I was getting at.  I've also been thinking about gender roles, more specifically the gender roles You want us to have.  I do think that the two genders are different and have different abilities and gifts, overall.  On the other hand, I am vehemently against forcing someone to work or stay at home or have kids or anything just because of their sex.  I am against the idea that women should just stay at home, and even against the idea that women should be subservient or below men.  I think that's stupid.

But I don't know what You think.  Unfortunately for me and my feminism, I also know what the Bible says, and it's rather sexist.  Then again, so were the times and the people writing it.  Jesus taught women and men, accepted their faith, and there was a group of women supporting Him and His disciples.  So I don't know what I think, or what You want me to think.  Please shape my thoughts on this issue as You want them to be shaped, and please help me to find that one person You want me to be with.  Amen.

1 John 4:7-16

I read this passage today with a group of Christians.  As we talked about it, the idea came up that God shows people his love mainly through the actions of Christians (especially verse 12: "No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us").  Just--wow.  What a crazy idea!  God trusts us enough to show others His love!  Now, I would agree that other people are not the only ways that God shows us His love--I have felt it plenty of times just straight from Him, especially when I really needed to feel it, and it's affirmed again and again in Scripture.  But still, the fact that other people are one of the main ways to get God's love out there and have it be felt by others just amazes me.  I suppose I would compare it to how God gives us the choice to follow Him or not--He trusts us to make the right choice.  I suppose putting it down on (virtual) paper it doesn't seem like such a logical connection but to me, both show how much God trusts us--no, maybe that's not the right word.  How much He allows us to make our own decisions, even when He knows we're wrong and we're headed on a path for destruction.  But He never forces us to do anything.

I don't really know what to write about today.  Nothing exciting or ground-shattering happened; I just did a lot of work.  Then again, that's what life is about an awful lot of the time.

Small things

It's so easy to get caught up in the routine and bustle of everyday life.  Please help me to see You in the small things.

Thanks you God for this day!

Walking in the rain

Today I watched the movie The Encounter, which was amazing and I'd highly recommend it.  It's about five people who are stuck at a diner during a storm, and while they're there Jesus comes and talks to them all about their lives.  It was very moving and thought-provoking.

I also went for a walk with God today.  We just walked and talked.  It was very peaceful, and definitely something I need to do more often.

Habakkuk 3:17-18

"Though the fig tree do not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stables, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation."  Habakkuk 3:17-18

Just... wow.  What a beautiful statement, what a beautiful faith that must have been.

Matthew 10

Freaked me out, I forget how uncompromising You can be--are?  Maybe I understand You wrong, but in my life sometimes You seem to change Your mind, be willing to forgive.  Maybe I'm confusing forgiving with compromising.  Like when I was reading a lot of this, it was just going over my head, but I heard You say, "That's OK, that's not important right now."  But I got to other parts, where You say, "Don't deny me before man, or I will deny you before the Father" I'm afraid.  I do deny You.  I do fail to tell people about You.  Please forgive me, please teach me and guide me in how to do that.  Please help me to live  my life as a testimony to You.  But I am afraid. You seemed much less forgiving and more no-nonsense than You ever seem when I'm talking with You.  Please give me the strength to follow You. Maybe You just seem uncompromising because You imply (say?  can't remember) that it's You or hell.  Is there really a hell?  That's a very uncompromising statement.  Also, if someone didn't believe that You were God, a completely crazy one.  The people who first heard You must have been so confused!  Or thought You were crazy.  Reminded me of CS Lewis, said that can't take You as an amazing guy without believing You're also God, because if don't believe You're God than all the stuff You said about it just makes You sound completely crazy.  How/why did the disciples first decide You were God, I wonder?  Did You ever say it?  Not sure, but You do show it, through miracles, through knowledge, through love.  Maybe actions are more important than words.  OK, (almost) definitely.  Can lie with words, words so arbitrary, so easy to manipulate.  But can lie with actions, too, pretend to be someone you're not, or your actions can fail to express what you want to express, what you feel,