Daily Readings First Thoughts May 16 2007

Morning: Psalm 99:1-9
Deuteronomy 19:1-7
James 5:13-18
Luke 12:22-31

James 5:13-18

¹³Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. ¹⁴Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. ¹⁶Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. ¹⁷Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. ¹⁸Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.

We thinkers have trouble stopping to pray. I'd like to rationalize sometimes and say that all my thoughts are prayers to God - that I really do pray without ceasing. But I confess: I get stuck in my own head often. Thinking about a person or situation deeply and wondering how I can help, searching for something to say that will impact the need, or dare I say, strategizing, planning. I suppose it is true that all of our thoughts are holy, if they're about what matters to God.

But James reminds me there is a sequence, an order to a prayer life that doesn't start with me or what's going on. It starts with God. If I'm truly praying, my thoughts are intentionally on God first. I love the part in James that exhorts me to sing psalms when I'm cheerful, smack in the beginning of the exhortation to pray for suffering and sickness and forgiveness. I need to get my praise on more! Send the praise before my prayers and thoughts. And lighten up, Lyn. There is so much to be cheerful about, even in the midst of deep thoughts, guilt, and especially offered with weighty petitions and supplications to God.

I am trying to discipline myself to pray first and think later. Praise God when I feel a giggle coming on, then thank Him for his goodness. To lift up my hands to the heavens for no reason. I'm trying to listen to God before I analyze everything to death. I can't out-think God anyway, who had the perfect solution to every pain and sickness, grief and sin in Jesus. And I can't out pray Jesus, but I can call out his name, and sing his praises, before anything else comes to mind. There's power in the name! My first thought in prayer: Jesus.

He has thought of everything. Dear Jesus. Amen.

Daily Scriptures First Thoughts May 15 2007

Morning: Psalm 98:1-9
Deuteronomy 8:11-20 or
Deuteronomy 8:15-22
James 1:16-27
Luke 11:1-13
Evening: Psalm 66:1-20

God is the giver of all that is good, reminds James: ¹⁷Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Like James, this I believe. I thank God for my lifestyle, for my faith, for my church, my family. Today, however, I'm struck by the warning that comes before that truth in verse 16: ¹⁶Do not be deceived, my beloved.

This implies there is a deceiver, who delights in distracting us from the Good and Perfect Giver. Who mocks us into trivializing the commandments of God, or ignoring them altogether, and competes for our faith. The deceiver is the god of our society, our economics and culture, of our political systems, who tells us we can have it all and still believe in God. That hard work will get us all we want, and gives us a pat on the back when we've "made it"; so we can buy the "stuff" churned out in the sweat shops of Nicaragua and China. The god of this world is our fast food industry that is making families fatter and sicker, while pharmaceutical companies get richer on our sicknesses. The deceiver keep snapping our heads and hearts back to the mirror, so that we see only our own reflection, and then kisses us. The deceiver could care less about God's purposes for anyone else but the person in the mirror.

When I study the world, past and present and the people in it - religious people as well - I come to the conclusion that we humans actually prefer the god of the world over the God of the Universe. Why else is an African child dying from Malaria or starvation every 30 seconds today? Why then would there still be men who abuse their women, leave their families high and dry? Why then, are there still Enrons and World Coms and (dare I say it), church enterprises who have built huge personal empires on the backs of the people? Why then are there people in our neighborhoods who drive by and kill each other - with words, guns or indifference? Why then, do we still look in the mirror and say we're not good enough or rich enough, or strong enough, or pretty enough and pursue charlatans who say they can make us better?

The Deuteronomic law has been trumped; the prophets of profit are drowning out God's prophets; we're playing "Deal or No Deal" with God, knocking on the wrong doors, working our butts off for the wrong reasons, and then wondering - Why doesn't God do something?

⁶Do not be deceived, my beloved.

¹⁷Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. ¹⁸In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.²⁷Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Unstained, the way God already see us because of Christ - holy and His, without stuff and beauty and power to offer. For as God gazes on us, God sees the Son, the greatest gift of all to humankind, lifting God's purpose up with holy hands, to forgive us, bless us, equip us and deploy us for the needs of the world. In Christ alone - whom we follow, is our holy and singular purpose for the good gifts God has given us.

I pray this changes how we live today.