A More Encouraging Post

...remember, I already told you to start learning and doing now while you have the money.  That might include buying yourself a prayer book, if you think you might find it as helpful as I've been doing.  There's some wisdom, after all, in following patterns laid down by smart people who've been dead for hundreds of years.  Or in simply yelling whatever you think you need to say to God at the sky.  Both ways are valid, but I find the book helps me concentrate, since my prayers are generally interrupted by tiny voices saying things like "Buddy has noodles!" or "Mama, I'm poopy."

The Lord has been so gracious to me in my devotional time as we enter these couple weeks of ickyiness.  I've been praying (among other things) the Anglican Great Litany, which you may find here, and which is a great thing to pray when you have no idea how to go about phrasing things to the Lord.  (Or when you find yourself just saying "help! help! help!" and you wish to be more specific.)  The Litany takes you down through absolutely everything you could ever think of to pray for, and although it's meant to be read with responses, you can do it by yourself quite satisfactorily.

I found a One Year Bible at the secondhand store a few months back and have been using it quite happily this year (go New Living Version! you rock) and was charmed to find that the Lord had set up the story of Gideon to fall on April 26, which was yesterday, and today.  There's nothing like reading about a cowering, sulking, sign-demanding judge to make you realize that the Lord can save whom He pleases with whom He pleases.

The reading in my Psalm for the day yesterday was the last half or so of Psalm 119, the part where God is doing some housecleaning of those who don't love His law.  Yeah baby.

I've also been doing another contemplative prayer practice lately--even before this whole thing broke--that deserves its own post, in case you might want to try it.  I'll write that post next.

Want a good poem about Christ as Warrior?  Try "The Goodly Fere" by Ezra Pound.  "Fere" means "brother" in case you don't speak old Scotch. :)  Presumably it's Simon Peter talking in the poem, though I suppose it could have been one of the sons of thunder too.

Christ is King, and you seriously don't want to get Him riled by endangering babies.

Under the Omnipotence,

Breanna