You can find today’s reading by clicking on this sentence.
‘Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving.’
It’s hard to keep going, isn’t it? New years very often don’t mean a new you, or a new start (unless you work in, or have fallen prey to a marketing tactic). I remember several late Decembers in recent years where I’ve thought something along the lines of ‘it’ll be great when this year’s over, I can leave it all behind me as I move on to the new.’ Except that doesn’t work. January begins and, most likely, what your life looked and felt like in December will be what it looks like in January. It can be discouraging to tread on through January and find that the exalted hopes we sang about and resolutions we made have already faded into distant memory. Is it worth it all?
Well, yes it is. We’re hidden with Christ in God. We’re clothed in love because he has dressed us that way, and now we can live with him day by day, devoting ourselves to prayer. God wants to talk to us. He wants us to listen for his voice around us, but also, he wants to listen to us. What a strange thought, that God would want to listen to me. Especially when I feel like I struggle to get people around me to listen sometimes! But God wants me to bring myself to him every day, not necessarily in a set series of forms of words (although those help many people) but as myself. Are you talking to God, today? Not just bringing him your cares and concerns, the things you’d like to see fixed or redeemed, but in a relational way. Are you honest with God? There’s no point pretending when we pray. We’re searched and known anyway. But in praying we are acknowledging God, bringing ourselves to him, making life about more than us. In some small way we are doing part of the work of ushering in the kingdom. Prayer ‘works’ because it causes us to look to God beyond ourselves and acknowledge our need of him. Sometime today, at least once, spend some time making yourself think of things for which you can ‘render thanks for the great benefits we have received at his hands’. It’ll make the world about more than you and, ultimately, bring the glory of God once again back in to focus as the centre of your day.