Sometimes, I don’t know where to begin.

I pray about it. (I admit I should pray more.) (*lightbulb* – Lenten commitment: pray – more.)

I ask God in my prayers to show me what His Will is, for me, for this writing. What should I write about? Where should I start?

I think that starting is a common dilemma, for many people. For people who want to do God’s Will, it can hold you back because the only real thing we want to do is to please Him. Our desire to please Him often has this effect: we freeze. We don’t want to make a mistake. We are afraid we will make Him upset with us, or disappointed. We only see Him still as the God Who Judges.

Many years ago, I went searching for so many answers. Okay, in my life at that point, the only questions I was asking were “Can I be healed?” and “If so, then how?”.

Jesus came and, I believe, healed me. This was no small event in my life. This changed everything.

One thing that changed was the way I prayed. What had really changed actually was my hopes for my prayers.

Because of my healing, I began to believe that God heard my prayers. This was amazing to me, and what was also amazing was that I felt there were many things about Him that He wanted me to learn. He led me to the Bible – to learn about His Divine Nature, to understand that this world was created by Him and belonged to Him, to see His Divine and Holy Love revealed to us.  I was led to understand that the Bible was, in fact, His Inspired and Blessed Word.

One day, I prayed for His leading to grow my faith and how to serve Him. And I felt that I was led to these instructions:

“Keep it simple.”

Many times it seems that the more “civilized” and “educated” human beings and society become, the more lost we become. We are grand about ourselves. Then, another school shooting, we mourn and look for answers, but soon we are judging, pointing fingers at each other. We enact laws that offer solutions, and some laws even work. But, let’s face it, we are not really very good at this, after all.

Doesn’t it seem that both sides, politically, can have issues wrong? Human beings tenaciously hold on to laws and rulings that in the end destroy other human beings callously. All sides feel they are justified. All in the name of “civilization”.

Can we stop the evil of human against human? Let’s keep it simple. Let’s recognize that God created all of this world. He made human beings in His Image. Before we make laws and judge one other and kill one another, let’s recognize His Sovereignty over us, and let’s consult Him. Let’s keep it simple. Let’s pray.

Prayer offends some people; they don’t believe God exists or if He does, He should be kept in a proper place. Or they believe in God, they just don’t value prayer. But Jesus often went to deserted places to pray. The Son of God, who was also God Himself, honored the importance of prayer in the situations of His Life here, whether he was giving thanks for food, or performing miracles, or facing His Death at the Last Supper, and He prayed for us while dying on the Cross. He taught us how and what to pray. He advocated for Love, love for God and each other. He showed that His touch, even His saliva, could heal the blind or the deaf. He kept it that simple. Prayer and love. That is enough for me.

Jesus is my Savior.

All those years ago, I felt God leading me to Himself, to looking for my answers for life in Him. When I pray for a place to begin, I am always led to this answer: “Start at the beginning.” And don’t forget to keep it simple.

“In the beginning …”

I wrote a talk on prayer once for a church retreat. I believe the same thing now that I wrote then.

“…I used to be a girl with many questions. I wanted to know as much as I could about as many things as came my way. Mostly I had to know the “why” of everything – why things happened the way they did, why people behaved the way they did. I guess I thought that having the answers to my questions would keep me and the people I loved safe in some way, and ultimately bring me happiness. But often my ‘answers’ left me unsatisfied. And ‘thinking’ I knew the “why” of things would just leave me puzzled and frustrated, bringing stress and sadness.

Then God came and changed my life. He told me over and over again, “I love you.” His love made me whole. One thing I came to realize is that He made me the way I am, with all my questions. He teaches me to come to Him when I need answers…

…when I hear the words of Genesis 1 and John 1, I go to a place in my mind not unlike the churches of my childhood. I love the quiet, and the water, and the soft darkness of Genesis. God is there and He is the Light. The image of the Spirit of God hovering over the waters tells me how much God cares for His creation – how protective He is and how much He values what He has made. And the second reading tells that Jesus was there at the beginning, as God and with God, and that all of us were made through Him.

When I sit and think about these verses, so many of my questions and my worries melt away from me, as I am reminded of the profound truth – that we have been created by God – Father, Son, and Spirit – and that we are loved deeper than we can ever understand.

I am filled with the deepest forever gratitude that God, my shepherd, would come and find me in my darkness and claim me for His own. “

“In the beginning…”

Prayer for today,  Friday, February 16, 2018:

Dear God,