Liquid Prayers

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Is there a wrong way to pray?
It seems to me we’re invited to pray in all kinds of ways.

Pray in the Spirit  in every situation.
Use every kind of prayer and request there is.
Ephesians 6:18

We can pray spontaneously from the heart or speak words that the saints have used for centuries.

Our prayers can be praise and thanksgiving or confession and repentance.

We can pray on our knees or stand with our hands raised high.

We can pray at set times or anytime.

We can sing for joy or lament in sorrow.

We can use lots of words or no words at all.

When we don’t know what to pray, “the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26) Groans can be prayers.

When all we have is tears, that’s enough.

“Let us learn to think of tears as liquid prayers.”
(Charles Spurgeon)

Perhaps tears are the most precious prayers.

You keep track of all my sorrows.
You have collected all my tears in your bottle.
You have recorded each one in your book.
Psalm 56:8

So whether you’re coming to God today
with shouts of praise or groans and tears,
know that He hears all kinds of prayers.
There’s not a wrong way to pray.
Just come.

Impatient Impatiens

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This time of year, greenhouses are brimming with impatiens.
They are my go-to flowers for our shady front porch.
Every year.
Four big pots are filled with the red variety
with some white ones planted in the middle of each one.
Every single year.

The word “impatiens” is Latin for “impatient,” named thus because of the way their seed pods explosively release seeds at the slightest touch. In other words, impatiens are touchy and tend to blow up at the smallest disturbance.

As I carried out my yearly ritual of planting red and white impatiens, I was reminded that this is year #4 in my nine-year study on the Fruit of the Spirit, as found in Galatians 5:22.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is
love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
(Kinda glad self-control is at the end.)

Love, joy, peace….patience.
Oh boy.
This could be a long year.

Years ago, I tried to teach my young children the concept of patience
and found this definition:

“Patience is waiting with a happy spirit.”

I can grit my teeth and wait when I have to—
it’s the happy spirit that needs some work.
Less touchiness, no blowing up.

Hopefully, this summer as my impatiens grow on the front porch,
the Holy Spirit will help the fruit of patience to grow in me.

Super-Duper

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I am an unashamed word nerd.
I have a list on my Notes app titled “Whizz-Bang Words.”
Doesn’t everyone?

Sometimes they are words that are just fun to say: rollicking and flapdoodle.
I’d rather be described as the former (carefree and joyous) than the later (fool).

Sometimes they are words that go well together: linger and longer.
Surely they belong in a poem somewhere.

Maybe that’s why the Apostle Paul is my Bible Buddy. He was a master wordsmith. Finding the right words was so important to Paul that sometimes the Greek language just wasn’t big enough to express what he wanted to say. So Paul invented brand new words, usually by mashing together two smaller words and creating an expression that was revolutionary.

Perhaps he tossed in these unique expressions for some shock value. It made people perk up their ears. “What did he say? Come again?”

To prove the level of my nerdiness, I have made it my goal in life to find every one of Paul’s mashed-up, made-up words. Using some online resources, it’s not that hard to dig up these invented idioms that are found only one time in the scriptures.

One example is in Romans 8:37, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” More than conquerors is one word in Greek: hypernikaō‘ (pronounced hoop-er-nik-ah-o). Nikaō‘ means conquerors, but putting the hyper in front creates a whole new expression: we might say “super-duper conquerors.”

To be a conqueror implies complete, overwhelming victory,
but Paul wanted to add some punch
so he made up a new word:
hypernikaō‘—more than conquerors. 

Paul was a super-duper-hooper kind of guy
because
he served a super-duper-hooper kind of God.
May we learn to live in the
“more than”
“the overwhelming”
“the super-duper”
love of God.

Gall

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“They came to a place called Golgotha.
There they offered Jesus vinegar to drink,
mixed with gall;
but after tasting it, he refused to drink it.”
Matthew 27:34

See that knobby thing growing on that tree branch? It’s a gall. Galls are any kind of abnormal growth on a plant. They can be caused by insect infestation, bacteria or viruses, injuries or irritations.

I never paid much attention to those weird lumps before.
Now I see them everywhere.

Vinegar or wine infused with wood from a gall produces bitter tasting painkiller. It was offered to Jesus on the cross but he refused to take it. Christ was determined to take on the full force of our sin and drink the cup of suffering to the dregs without anesthesia. It had to be vinegar and gall because 1,000 years before the crucifixion, King David wrote,

“They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.”
Psalm 69:21

Why all this talk about galls?
PB has been chosen to be an extra on “The Chosen.”
He goes to Utah soon for three days of filming crowd scenes for season six.

I’m not sure he’ll pass as a Jewish rabbi, but perhaps he could be a bedouin sheep-herder from the far northern reaches. Or an Anglo-Saxon merchant with Viking blood carrying lutefisk and lefse from the North Sea.

I bet he’ll be the only one on the film set with a gall on his walking stick.

24 on the 24th

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April 24th is a big day in our family.
My sister, my great-niece and one of my granddaughters
all share birthdays on 4-24.

This year we have a golden birthday
and it isn’t Robin or Adrienne or Ember.

It’s PB.

Twenty-four years ago, my man had triple bypass surgery on April 24.

I watched the nurses wheel him down the hall on a gurney.
I heard his familiar voice call out, “Hope it’s a boy!”
I went to the waiting room and waited.
And waited and waited.
And waited.

When he was in the recovery room after surgery,
he sang “Happy Birthday” to my sister with a tube down his throat.

That’s just the kind of guy he is.

Happy birthday to PB’s heart.
And many more.

A joyful heart is good medicine.
Proverbs 17:22

Ember Blake has a story of her own that’s worth re-visiting.