4/1 Our Father in heaven, we pray again for your guidance and help – help us to recognize and accept our differences with others. Guide us through these days of uncertainty and confusion. Give us the courage of our convictions and teach us when and how to speak those convictions. Amen
Vindication Socks
3/18/03 Peter Marshall: Our Father, since we cannot always do what we like, grant that we may like what we must do, knowing that truth will one day be vindicated and that right in the end will prevail. Bless those who serve us this day and keep them all in Thy peace. Amen
Peter Marshall served as a chaplain in the US Senate. He had a heart attack and died at age 46. Why Dad quoted him in a prayer for Exchange Club, I don’t know. I would guess he liked the note of perseverance and trust.
My must do tasks were yard work and matching socks, today. Typically I wait till I am walking out the door, burrowing through the “lost sheep” pile looking for a match. Today I decided to cull the flock.
I found toddler size socks (not a pair) in the plastic bowl that doubles as a receptacle for “lost sheep” socks, awaiting a buddy.
How long some were waiting! So, sock vindication is accepting I have no pairs and it is time to pitch them in the trash, particularly when the son who used to fit this particular sock, might only get 4 toes inside it.
This was not hard to do this culling and transfer to the trash.
Why have I waited this long? Why have I moved these 3 different times?
Lookout Tupperware! Your days are numbered.
Faith in Your Intervention
3/1/05 Our Heavenly Father, we come again chilled by yet another storm – by headlines depicting death and violence – by the anxieties of what might happen. Help us to free ourselves of stress – to pursue purposeful and responsible actions and to have Faith in your intervention. Amen
Today’s March 1 sounds like this weather report of Dad’s. That hasn’t changed. Nor have we escaped death and violence in the headlines. In fact now it is worse, as we don’t just read it at our kitchen table in the morning paper with our coffee, we carry it around with us and are caught up on the latest thanks to the internet.
The anxieties of what may happen indeed are nurtured in fertile soil. But here’s the thing, we can be free of this stress, but I am not sure I agree with Dad’s belief we can free ourselves.
Does God intervene? Many despair and say, “No.” Not all interventions look like Superman stopping a train (yes, I recall watching black and white reruns at Beverly? YMCA eating pizza while Dad worked some event). Some intervention, love that is singular, ongoing…is in the form of people in our lives that help mitigate our pain and stress.
Help me to have faith in Your Intervention and consequently, have faith in you, put here in my life for a reason.
Thanks!
To See Beyond
2/6/07 Our Heavenly Father, for the comforts and joys of life that we take for granted, we give you our thanks – help us to see beyond the weather – to see instead the concerns of others and to help them cope with their shortcomings. Amen
Once more, I am reminded that what my father had written loses much in today’s reading, only. The tone he would have used for the last sentence would have admonished me to stop thinking of myself, and the things I might think are lacking.
To see beyond, what we think we see or know, or believe takes courage.
Braving the cold weather to walk or shovel takes courage. Braving a dark abyss of tomorrow’s unknowns likewise takes courage.
May I not take the peace and comfort for granted, Lord.
Thank you.