CHOICES

We always have the choice to serve God where we are, or to run and serve Him elsewhere--or not.

If we allow ourselves to be guided by God's love, we may choose to stand and fight. But sometimes circumstances overwhelm us, and like any great general we have to learn when to sound retreat. To sacrifice is not always to lose.

Sometimes we must sacrifice one thing in order to obtain something better. The good general surveys the ground and looks for a better place to defend or attack from, and so a retreat may actually be an advance in disguise.

Allowing batters to walk in baseball counts in the statistics against a pitcher, but an effective baseball manager sometimes orders his pitcher to deliberately walk one batter so that he will be facing a weaker hitter, and any decent pitcher will often ignore his "strikes to balls ratio" statistic and deliberately throw a ball rather than a strike, hoping to get the batter to "chase after it" and strike himself out.

If we choose to stand firm on our ground and "fight the good fight," perhaps even to our death, whether that death is a result of our fighting or simply the natural end of our physical life, we must believe that we are where God wants us to be, doing what God wants us to do. Only then can we draw on His strength.

To give up one's life may not involve the sacrifice of our physical bodies, as in a war or other violent confrontation. It may be simply giving up our own dreams and hopes and yielding to the needs of someone else. That someone may be an elderly parent, or a child, a husband, or a wife suffering sickness or disabilities. Or it may be someone else entirely, someone who was even formerly a stranger, but who is now our friend or beloved. People give up their lives to care for animals, as well, or for the greater good of a number of people they will never even meet, but who they hope will benefit from their research or their labor.

If we choose to run away entirely from a situation, we may discover that we have taken our problems with us or encounter a completely new set of problems previously undreamed of. And yet, we may still choose to serve God in our new life.

Sometimes we may find that we cannot physically run from a place, whether that is a hospital bed or a jail cell, but we can still choose to serve God or not in our place. The mind and the spirit are free even if the body is not.

The same is true if we retreat or move on to something we hope will be better. The choice is always ours. We are always free to choose to serve God. Or not.

TRUE PRAYER

Too often my prayers become a series of distracting thoughts, ending up going around in my own little treadmill of repetition. A prayer book introduces other things, ideas, and people to pray for and about, brings higher thoughts to my weary mind, broadens my misty horizons, and lifts my spirit above my petty burdens.

But sometimes when I try to pray, my eyes skim over the familiar words. For years I have felt guilty and tried to go back and reread (re-pray?) with limited success. And in church I couldn't do that anyway.

Last week it came to me that it didn't matter. God knows what the words are. They are more to remind me than to remind Him! And if there is something I really need to see and have sink in, He always draws my wandering attention to it, so that often I find something new I would swear I never saw or read before!

The important thing about my prayer time isn't so much the words I say or don't say, but to simply be quiet in His presence, drawing His strength and peace into my heart and mind and spirit. And if "reading" familiar prayers keeps my mind on Him, even if the meaning of the words isn't penetrating, that's the important thing.

Prayer is perhaps as much focusing on God as it is petition, thanksgiving, praise, or intercession.

RUNNING ON BATTERY POWER

This morning I just felt totally whanged out.

"Lord," I prayed, "please help me get out of my funk and into Your joy." And with that, Sally May cat hopped up on my desk and made me smile and laugh. But like a butterfly alighting on you, she doesn't stay. She paws at my mug mat and my cup of green tea and then leaps away to sit under my lamp by my computer, as if to say, "get busy with your writing or at least your e-mail."

"I'm running," I said to her, "on battery power." "Whoa! THAT's the problem," I told her. "I'm supposed to be plugged into God's power, not trying to do everything on my own."

When I picked up my NLT Bible Promise Book, I found today's verse was 2 Corinthians 3:5 "It is not that we think we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualification comes from God." Uh-huh. I think that's what I just discovered on my own. Well, not entirely on my own. I had some help there from the Master of the Universe and from a small, elderly but feisty, red and white kitty.