Lost in a Book

Drew always spends the night at his dad's place on Mondays, so if I'm going to "play" with some friends (read, go out for coffee), I usually plan it for Monday evenings.

My plans for tonight got postponed, so I decided, rather quickly, this morning, to make this a fasting day. It's a spiritual discipline, apparently, and I think, that in addition to "doing" Lectio on Saturday mornings, I'll try and do a Facebook n Food Fast once a month. (Funny thing about Lectio... this morning my boss handed me two pages of writing to edit for an upcoming seminar. They were "How To" instructions for Lectio Divina. And he doesn't read my blog, so it's not like he read my post on how I was getting my guidelines from Wikipedia and he felt he had to intervene.) (Hmmm. But God read my post. He must've felt some intervening was necessary.) (I guess I'm OK with that.)

The last time I did this, on Dec 1, I did it with a list of very specific, very urgent, very close-to-me requests and it was, like, alot of hours of pleading with God. As far as I'm aware, we (there were a number of us praying) saw a miracle in one of the situations, and got some peace in others.

This time I'm not part of a group all calling out to God with the same requests. I'm doing this on my own. With no agenda. No lists. No expectations. It almost seems wrong to make it spiritual. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just me deciding not to eat or play scrabble for 40 hours. (Actually, when I first decided to spontaneously make today a "fast" day, I made it a 24 hour thing. But then when I posted it on my blog this afternoon, the alliteration worked better if I made it a 40 hour thing. All those F's (facebook, food, fasting, forty) just looked and sounded punchier. So, that's how come it ended up being 40 hours... because it was a better title. Yeah. This is so not a spiritual discipline. It's me, having something to blog about.

Anyway, my day at work was made up of non-brain-taxing activities, mostly dealing labels and envelopes and books. So I closed my office door and turned Praise fm up a little louder and just hummed along. (So glad Christmas is over. One whole month of nothing but Christmas tunes was so not inspiring. Not a fan.) And as the day wore on, I realized that most of the songs where praise songs. I was singing and humming words that I have a hard time saying.

Words like;

Blessed be the name of the Lord,

Blessed be Your name.

Amazing love, how can it be?

That You, my King, would die for me.

Name above all names, worthy all praise

My heart will sing, how great is our God.

Here's my heart, now take and seal it ...

And, well, I dunno, all of a sudden, I thought, "Maybe today won't be about me asking Him (begging Him) for all those items on my list. Maybe today will just be about me being open to whatever He wants... I can do some worship, and some reading, and some praying, and whatever. How about if once in my life, I just let things happen?"

So this is me, just letting it happen.

I went for a walk in the rain tonight and asked Him what He wanted me to do regarding yesterday's question. (You know the one ...What NEW thing I was going to do to make my church stronger. Yeah. That one.) And I suggested to Him, if He didn't have anything specific in mind, I'd be open to doing what Diane (a blogger who is 'doing' these questions too) is doing, "I'm going to put my time in to the life of a young girl in our church. My life was thoroughly changed by someone pouring themselves in to me while I was growing up and I think now is the perfect time for me to do the same. AND it's new for me, so it fulfills the question. This is a whole new area for me to explore and serve."

I have no one in mind. I'm not even sure if I'm qualified to invest in anyone based on my track record, but if all of a sudden I find a new person in my life, I'll know they have been brought my way by God.

I probably won't let you know if it happens, so ... sad for you I guess.

:)

I finished reading a book this evening.

Do you know who Orson Scott Card is? Ender's Game?

He writes science fiction. Many, many science fiction titles to his credit.

And then, outa nowhere, he did a 3 book series called The Women of Genesis. Years ago, I found the first one, Sarah, at Save-On-Foods in their book section. I loved it and kept an eye open for the other books in the series, but I guess they never really caught on. So over Christmas I ordered Rebekah and Rachel/Leah from Amazon (my first Amazon order ever. And it was addictively easy.)

I am so looking forward to chatting with this woman in heaven. I love her courtship story. How she and Isaac both waited on God to bring them to each other. God IS in the business of match-making. She was a mom. With sons. And she did her best to be a good wife, loving mother and faithful follower of God. She was human and feisty and broken and really. I think she is fascinating.

You know? We think we are raising children in tough times... all the temptations, distractions, all the evil out there... but they had just as many challenges back in the day. And a mom is a mom, regardless of which century she lives in. And dads and moms will often not agree on how kids should be raised. Even if they both are seeking God's will.

At one point in the book, I forgot this was a Bible-based story and thought to myself, "Oh my goodness, all this bickering. It's so draining. Does it never end?" God must hear the same prayer requests, hear the same arguments, hear the same petty fights century after century. It's a wonder He still listens.

I know this book is just a novel. But maybe it was like that in those days...

Three things I'm thankful for:

1. A gentle day. A good way to start the new week.

2. An easy read. A good book to get me re-interested in the Genesis stories.

3. A quiet house. A good place for me to be tonight.

Shalom,

Oh, I almost forgot.

Today's question: For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year? Oh right. Like I'm going to post that here, on the internet. Not hardly. Besides, it's not just one. It's a list of nine. I can't pray for (my) one without tacking on all the others. Because it wouldn't be fair if my (real) one got saved and none of the others did. I'm praying for nine miracles.