Midweek Thought ~ Time, worries and reliance on God

I have found lately, that I am extremely guilty of continued fickleness in my relationship with and reliance on God. It’s really rather foolish.

For the first time, I have to allow the children to spend a whole week with their father, week on, week off, during the summer school holidays. It’s hard, really hard. Not only because I worry about them … are they getting enough sleep; are they safe and happy; what if they’re crying and want me … but because I miss them, so very much. 

You know that I’ve just moved house. There’s a lot to do and a lot to manage. It’s the holidays and as a consequence, I genuinely have to focus for a while to know what day it is. I forget things and mislay things; I worry about cost and safety; about winter coming and whether or not I’ll have heating installed before then … it goes on … about schooling and the issues around differences of opinion between the children’s father and myself; about play dates and sporting classes … then I forget to order food or go shopping and need to remember that someone is coming to quote for some fencing or continue work in the cellar!

All boring day to day stuff and of course it’s normal to feel a bit discombobulated at times … that’s ok and you’ll all relate to it in some way.

What’s strange though, is that in this flurry of adjusting to a ‘new normal’, I’m not relying on God’s help as much or staying awake long enough to pray properly. How silly! Why is it that when I need God’s stabilising help, guidance and peace the most, I neglect to tap into the very source that supplies it? It’s bonkers.

I need God in a very real and present way right now, but I haven’t really communicated this to him much. I know that amazingly, he still cares, loves and will strengthen me, but he wants to hear my concerns and take my burdens to replace them with his incredible, surpassing understanding, peace.

There’s so much to pray about … not only my own small life and all it entails, but others too. It’s a bit like that book title ‘too busy not to pray’ by Bill Hybels, and the well known poem ….

“I got up early one morning and rushed right into the day;

I had so much to accomplish that I didn’t have time to pray.

Problems just tumbled about me, and heavier came each task.

‘Why doesn’t God help me?’ I wondered. He answered, ‘You didn’t ask,’

I wanted to see joy and beauty, but the day toiled on, gray and bleak;

I wondered why God didn’t show me. He said ‘But you didn’t seek.’

I tried to come into God’s presence; I used all my keys to the lock. 

God gently and lovingly chided, ‘My child, you didn’t knock.’

I woke up early this morning, and paused before entering the day;

I had so much to accomplish that I had to take time to pray.”

(Author unknown)

I need to try harder and practice self discipline. 

“If you’re too busy to pray … you’re too busy” (Mother Teresa).

“We are too busy to pray, and so we are too busy to have power. We have a great deal of activity, but we accomplish little; many services but few conversations; much machinery but few results” (R A Torrey).

“To desire revival  … and at the same time to neglect (personal) prayer and devotion, is to wish one way and walk another” (A W Tozer).

Ingrid x