Despite my best efforts, or lack of them the garden is flourishing. There are flowers blooming everywhere and each in their turn. There are weeds over growing the walls of the house, and the lack of time spent pruning the garden is showing. The pond is an area at the back of the house, just a small strange shaped area that is protected from the glaring sun and is a good place to hide away, and either pray or just wile the time away watching nature grow and pass on by.
Job 14:13-17
13 ‘If only you would hide me in the grave
and conceal me till your anger has passed!
If only you would set me a time
and then remember me!
14 If someone dies, will they live again?
All the days of my hard service
I will wait for my renewal to come.
15 You will call and I will answer you;
you will long for the creature your hands have made.
16 Surely then you will count my steps
but not keep track of my sin.
17 My offences will be sealed up in a bag;
you will cover over my sin.
If ever there was an evening I felt I needed to pray it was tonight. I’ve been feeling God ask me to pray all day but I have been running from him by keeping myself busy. But yesterday was the busy bee picture. Today God wants prayer. Prayer to Him to pray for others.
There are so many people that need our prayer; our heart felt, gut wrenching, just get on your knees and pray, type of prayer. But as ever I always focus on myself first. My selfishness gets in the way, and I felt that today. I even felt like Joseph cast into a pit with no water.
Then they took him and cast him into a pit.
And the pit was empty;
there was no water in it.
Except I think these pits are self imposed as we choose when to reach out to God, when to pray, when to follow him, and so I felt I was shutting the guidance of the Holy Spirit out. The no water seemed to represent shutting out the Holy Spirit. Letting my old self take over.
But God never leaves you in a pit, as he has plans for that pit.
The knock backs in my life have been moments that have spurred me on. Have set me racing ahead to see if I can rise to the challenge, to see if I can jump out of the pit.
“You don’t have a musical bone in your body!” – said one primary school teacher to me as she threw me out of the choir. Perhaps I haven’t got musical bone, not but this spurred me on to take up trumpet and know I enjoy performing on this instrument so much, it is one of my passions. I now have a musical muscle in my lips to perform – how’s that?
“You’re thick you are, you’ll never amount to anything!” – said one secondary school teacher. I was not allowed to do O levels at secondary school, apart from music. So I took it upon myself to do them afterwards, and then to do a degree, and then a teaching degree. I wish I could thank that teacher now.
“You are a weakling!” – was another retort at school. That led me to start Ju-Jitsu and focus on my health and getting fighting fit, practicing street fighting and other skills in the woods with some mates.
We have to be very careful what we say, and in my past I have said things that I have regretted, but I pray to God that the people I have said these insults too, that they have forgiven me and they have not caused lasting harm.
When I have not done my best, or responded with like for like, or in anger, I have gone away and then been renewed with the next day like the sunrise.
Before I stop and pray for tonight, which I feel I must spend a long time tonight, I also feel I need to say that the bible is the living word. The text of the bible is like no other. God knows when I have sinned, when I have done wrong, or what I am thinking about and this comes out as I read the bible.
Job 14:13-14 is talking about Jobs feelings, but I also read into a hint about when Jesus was hidden in a grave after he died on the cross – the bible is alive with God’s power, inspired by the Holy Spirit.
If someone dies, will they live again? Yes comes the cry from all the angels in heaven. When Jesus rose from the dead through the Holy Spirit.
And tonight more than anything I need the Holy Spirit to fill me, not so I can go out and feel good, but so that I can hear God’s bidding and do it without hesitation or fear.
Surely then you will count my steps
but not keep track of my sin.
My offences will be sealed up in a bag;
you will cover over my sin.
I am thankfull always for the fact that Jesus came, died, rose again and sent the Holy Spirit so that I could be renewed. Not just renewed but better as the King James version says; Changed!
God, Jesus will cover my sin, but I must follow the bidding of the Holy Spirit.
So as the pond may look full of weeds, they are there serving a purpose, they are spurring on life and supporting the frogs and the wildlife. Like the sun catching the bush at the back of the pond. It is giving warmth for the last rays in the day which are needed for some – prayers for Christians being persecuted tonight!
There is hope in the renewal and change that comes from the Holy Spirit
If only you would set me a time and then remember me.
And so I go to pray.
Amen
365 Exhortations 