Too Busy Not to Pray

There’s so much going on right now.  Tomorrow and Friday, I (Aimee) will be attending a conference.  Then, I’ll be driving up to stay with Sherann while we attend another conference together that begins on Monday.  I just came home from a meeting with my pastor where we were talking about Advent; yes, folks, Christmas is closer than you think it is.  We started some planning for the sermons and other potential events and discussing whether that was all pointing us in the right direction for where we want to be going in 2011.  Plus, I now have four books that he has asked me to read and I’m still working on the first one that he gave me a few weeks ago.

I’m not complaining.  Honest.  I’m looking forward to the conferences and to seeing Sherann.  I enjoy working at my church and being involved in our worship services.  I’m just saying that things are busy right now and they’re probably only going to get busier as we head towards January.  Just a fact, that’s all.

Ever have seasons like this?  It’s likely that you don’t have the exact same kind of craziness happening in your schedule, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have craziness, too.  It happens to all of us at one time or another and more often for some than for others.

The more full our schedules become the easier it is for us to set aside other things to make more room, things like prayer.  We convince ourselves that taking time to sit down and talk with God is not a responsible use of our time and so we skip it and try to move forward.  However, in actuality, this is just another one of those times where we are trying to play God and it isn’t going to help at all.  In fact, trying to play God generally does more than holding back positive effects, it usually has negative effects. 

The truth is that the busier our schedules get the more that we need God, so the more that we need to spend time in conversation with Him.  We need to pray for God’s guidance in general so that we don’t delude ourselves into thinking that we can do anything good without Him.  We need to pray that God will help us to remember that He is in charge so that we can let go of worries/anxieties that would slow us down and damage our health.  We need to pray that God will guide us safely through our days so that we don’t allow being in a hurry to put us in danger (that’s how I sprained my ankle once, true story).  We need to pray that God will open our hearts in our conversations, so that we don’t forget the importance of relationships and that even the person annoying us is beloved by God.

Prayer puts things in perspective and ensures that we are open to allowing God’s Spirit to move us and guide us in all that we do.

I’m going to go pray now.