A Prayer About Lost Perspective
When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you. Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Psalm 73:21-26
Dear Father, the older I get the more I’ve come to appreciate the many voices you’re recorded in your Word. There’s no moment, melancholy, mania or madness I’ll experience in life that you haven’t anticipated. Today I praise you for writing into Israel’s hymnal a song for the bitter and the beastly.
Dear Father, the older I get the more I’ve come to appreciate the many voices you’re recorded in your Word. There’s no moment, melancholy, mania or madness I’ll experience in life that you haven’t anticipated. Today I praise you for writing into Israel’s hymnal a song for the bitter and the beastly.
Indeed, there are times when I forget that I’m living in a fallen world with a fragile heart among foolish people, just like me. My expectations of You, and others, become more connected to La-La Land than to reality. When this happens, I become just like the psalmist Asaph-an envious, angry, senseless mess.
That you tolerate me in those times of disconnect is extraordinary. But that you still treasure me when I lose touch with gospel-sanity is exponentially astonishing. When I shake my first at you, your grasp of grace is all the tighter. When I complain about a stony silent heaven, you’re actively, quietly guiding my every footstep. When I try to ignore, spite or run away from you, you’re just as resolved to end my journey in the full presence of your glory.
It melts my ice-berg jagged-edged heart, that’s what such love does. Continue the thaw, dear Jesus. I’m not just the biggest loser when I pitch my tent in the land of disconnected heart. I’m also a thief, robbing a lot of people who are dear to me.
Restore to me the joy of your free and full salvation in Jesus, dear Father. Rescue me from my seething self-centered demanding-ness. Let me once again live and love like a gentle, grace-full, grateful man. Life in this world is just too short to waste on being pouty, petty and petulant. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.