The Bulky, Scary, and Too Much to Carry

 

Last year, it was my privilege to meet the school bus on Tuesday afternoons and greet four of our elementary-age grandchildren.  One of our then first-graders would always beg for me to carry his backpack home from the bus stop.  And every week, I took the backpack and replied, “What do you have in here?  Bricks?”

After snacks, I always asked about homework, and this little one would say, “I don’t think I have any.”

“Let’s take a look.”  I lifted his stuffed heavy backpack to the kitchen table and looked inside. One item at a time, layer by layer, I began spreading out the contents, the treasured collections of a curious little boy.   Crumpled worksheets already graded, his school-supplied Chromebook, a partially eaten lunch undated, an empty metal water bottle, several library books (“I was wondering where those were,” he chuckled), notices about past school events, a couple beloved small stuffed animals, a wrinkled t-shirt, dirty socks, his jacket that had been lost, and at the bottom, well, there was his new list of spelling words for the week and a practice sheet for subtraction. 

It was all spread out on the table.  The bulky, the scary, and the too much to carry.   

One of the ways the Old Testament talks about praying is spreading out our personal stuff before the LORD -- the good, the bad and the ugly. 

Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it, and Hezekiah went up to the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD.  And Hezekiah prayed… Isaiah 37. 14-15

Like Hezekiah in the midst of panic-inducing turmoil, praying is our first response, not last resort.

Not laying before God our pre-conceived answers or carefully manipulated outcomes, but coming with hands spread out and open to receive what God lays before us.  Spreading out, clearing out, handing off our griefs, fears, and anxieties, and trusting Him instead. 

What does prayer have to do with all this?  Everything. A literal come-to-Jesus moment.

Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest….For My yoke is easy, and My burden in light.  Matthew 11. 28, 30

The tipping point, when we are so burdened and overwhelmed, is asking God for help, not shirking our responsibilities, but unloading twenty pounds of unnecessary rocks of anxiety in our backpacks that God never intended us to drag along in the first place.

We spread out before Him what appears as heavy baggage we have to carry, wounds still unhealed from the past, favorite grudges we just can’t let go, and even irritations, like pebbles in our shoes, the unseen, distracting, and the hurtful.  Spreading out allows God to reveal what is real and what is not, what is essential, and what is just toxic junk handicapping our hearts. 

When we pray and open up our hearts before God, the things that defeat us are not so insurmountable at all. Worries and frightful things are revealed to be as they are, imaginary dragons that occupy way too much brain space, clog up our emotions, take up a demanding residence for us to care for fulltime, and push us to our limits.

It’s easy to see what others need to deal with.  But we all have stuff in our heavy-laden backpacks that needs to be prayed through.  What do we need to spread out before the Lord?  The busy details of this overscheduled day, the accumulated layers of fears that weigh us down, and way-down deep in the bottom the fierce and overwhelming foes that we cannot even begin to face.  Let Me carry that for you.

When we spread out these things, we are not revealing anything new and mysterious to God.  He sees and knows already.  But spreading and praying out into the open where we can see them in the sunlight, we find them faded, broken and without any power over us.  When we spread them out, God always unfolds something new. 

Double-Knot Your Shoes

I was still a fairly new and inexperienced runner when I entered a 5k race in the little town where we had moved.  It was well-before the craze of running had taken over our country.  I was not a serious runner by any means. By measure of pace, mere jogging would be a better descriptor.  For me, it was just another way of enjoying the outdoors.  And at the time, in a new location, as a young mom with two babies, and as a transplanted Yankee in a very southern town, participating was another way of connecting in our community.

But running began to teach me a lot more than how to exercise. Discipline in any form bleeds over into so many other areas of life.  As in every endeavor in life, I learned to approach and navigate the hills, blind turns, and unexpected potholes that loom suddenly into view, a discipline of endurance on many different levels.

And in that busy season of infants and toddlers, running helped me hit the reset button when I was out of my mind by the end of the day.  Before my husband returned from work, I would get supper ready, the baby girls settled, and pull on my running clothes for a quick run before we ate.  It was a routine in which each one of us thrived.

This particular 3.1 mile race took place on a weekday evening, a charity event sponsored by a local group.  I was one of the few women runners, and it was only my second race ever.  

With only about a quarter of a mile left in the race, I learned what seemed like an insignificant detail developing into something that mattered a lot.  I had tied on my running shoes, ready to run.  But I had not double-knotted them.   Over the course of the race, without my notice, the laces on my running shoes loosened, and my right shoe fell off.  I ran the rest of the course with only one shoe.

First rule of running, double-knot your shoes.  I haven’t forgotten that.

Along about the same time, I met an older woman at church.   She recommended to me, “Make the Bible the first thing you read in the day.”  I haven’t forgotten that either.

But I would add praying to that.  Double-knot your shoes.  God’s Word and prayer at the beginning of the day changes how we run through our day. 

What difference does it make?  Keeps me running with Him, courage in my veins, and shoes on my feet.  First things first.  Not so insignificant at all.

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize?  So run that you may obtain it.  Every athlete exercises self-control in all things.  They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.   1 Corinthians 9. 24-25

 

Culinary Misadventures and the Reality of Prayer

Our kitchen has been ground zero for many culinary misadventures, including baking with our grandchildren.  Their creativity often insists on its own way, but with disastrous results, let me count the ways.  Even from an early age, the kids are learning that maybe -- just maybe-- there is a different way of doing things that is not their own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, it does matter that we use the ingredients listed in the recipe and in the right amounts.  And a cake does not just emerge from the oven when they think it might be ready. Whatever we are working on will not just turn out anyway...indeed, more often than not, not turn out at all.  Someone else --including that professionally trained chef -- may indeed know a lot more than we do.  What does it take to realize that?

And each one of the children have learned in real time:  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.  Isaiah 55. 9

Relinquishment of our own set ways is not a matter of letting go, but holding even tighter to something else.  And that would be God.  He has another way of approaching and navigating these challenges right before us.  He always does.

Praying is a lot about making choices.  Not my will, but Yours.  And that way of praying changes not just our hearts, but the trajectory of our lives.  Make me know Your ways, O LORD, teach me Your paths. Psalm 25. 4  As in any of our own pursuits, what if we prayed differently about it? What if we prayed at all?

Not my schemes, but Your incredible plans.

Not what's on my radar, but Your incomprehensible imagination.

Not my control, but Your steadfast hand.

Not my feelings, but Your Presence.

Not my performance, but Your grace.

Not my patching together, but Your redeeming.

Not my fictions, but Your truth.

Not my adding, but Your multiplying.

Not my prescription for how it should be written, but Your grand narrative.

Not my fears of "what if...", but Your faithfulness of "what is."

Not my obsession with "what's next," but Your strength in "what's now."

Not my myopic vision, but Your eternal perspective.

Not my comfort, but Your Kingdom.

Not my glory, but Yours.

Not me, but You.

  

 

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

 

The writers of fiction tend to fall into two camps.  The first (and typically more vocal) group sketch out their entire stories, outline their plots from beginning to end, knowing their characters, their names and quirky behaviors.  Other writers just travel through, not knowing where the story is headed, surprised by the turns, but sometimes stuck in places with no obvious way to go.  Like staring at a blank screen or a sheet of paper for a very long time, and the first sentence is nowhere in sight.

When we don’t even know how to get started, a wise friend of mine advises, write from the middle.  Just start right where you are, what you can see, what you do know.  And let the story unfold.  Follow the thread.

And when we pray that way – when we pray from the middle – God take us places in praying we could never have foreseen.  God does not conform to our own carefully conceived plots, but opens us up to His ways in this.  We suddenly see that little trail through the thicket.  We are aware of unseen and unspoken needs, and even to pray about what we might never have considered.

Praying from the middle allows us to think prayerfully about everything.

God’s Word talks a lot about the middle of things.  Because He is right here in the midst of us.  Be strong and courageous.  Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you; He will not leave you or forsake you. Deuteronomy 31. 6

God does not hear prayers with great impressive poetic words anymore than the small everyday prayers of ordinary folk. And that would be us.  We come before Him with praises and thanks and cries of our hearts, one prayer building on another.  Our prayers are never so small or ordinary at all.  The power in prayer comes not in fancy words, or figuring out life, but because we are in conversation with the Almighty. 

In praying, we need not advise God how to behave or what to devise, nor spell out a pre-conceived outcome, nor know how the narrative should unfold.  Prayer draws us to Him and into His story even more.  Our experience right now is just another page, right in the middle of the story.  What is happening actually was founded on what God put in place so many pages ago, and we didn’t realize it at the time.

And surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age. Matthew 28. 20

Even when we are right in the middle of the confusing parts, He is with us, even now, even in this.  To the bottom of the page, to the end of the chapter, and then the next.  All the way through our story and God’s grander narrative, world without end.

We are only in the middle of our story.  That’s why we don’t comprehend where we stand. We can’t expect to know the rest.  Before God leads us through, He leads us in, and perhaps, He leads in us.

We may not know how to begin praying, or understand what it is swirling about, but we can pray from the middle.  Pray from what we do know.  Pray from where we are.  Pray when that is the only thing we know to do.  Pray from the middle, even when we don’t realize where God is going with this. 

The middle is not just part of the story, the mystery, or where we wander, but where our lives continue to move towards Jesus.  We are now just getting to the exciting part.  How differently would we pray if we realized that?

We may feel like we are wandering – and wondering – but we are not lost.  We are just in the middle.  What we are experiencing right now is not the end, no need to panic or despair, but a passage, a preparing, an equipping into another chapter.  Even when we are surrounded by what we do not understand doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense.  Even with all those confusing details – why in the world did that happen? – the Author knows the way through.  Those details are not random but comprise the vital components of God’s narrative that also impact everyone around us.

Without a middle, there is no story.  This is not just a miry bog to slog through, but pray into.

We are not lost or abandoned after all, not the middle of nowhere, but the middle of somewhere very carefully designed. “O Lord GOD, you know.”  Ezekiel 37. 3

In the middle kind of prayers recognize that we are not in a place where God is unfolding our stories in incredible ways.  We have no idea how it all fits together, but we can trust Him, not for a specific outcome, or if we are going to be ok, or even happily ever after, but we can trust Him.  And praying gets us there.  The scarlet thread all the way through is His steadfast love.  In the latter days, you will understand it clearly.  Jeremiah 23. 20

Our story is going somewhere.  Right to Him.  Praying helps us realize that.

In the middle kind of prayers, God whispers in the dark, “Just follow Me.  Even in this.”  Would we have that courage if we hadn’t prayed?

Praying sustains us, right in the middle, when we cannot fathom that there is a next page or chapter or how to endure the next few minutes ahead of us.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us, says the character Gandalf in the middle of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  

And that would be to pray from right where we are.