By Judy Villanueva
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.”
Turning over, I pressed the button on my phone to see what time it was…3:00am. Ugh! I thought, “If I don’t start thinking I won’t start worrying and I’ll be able to go right back to sleep.” No such luck. Loved ones flashed through my mind like a slideshow, each one holding their pain or need. Before long, I was wide-awake and aware of a familiar tightness in my tummy. I knew that loving my friends and family with worry would never be as helpful as loving them through prayer but it was the middle of the night and I was at a disadvantage. I wanted to pray but found myself listening instead to faith crushing questions like, “What’s the point?” and, “Does prayer really make a difference?”
Our lives are full of events that we understand and right alongside is everything else! God does not explain everything and, even if He did, we’d likely not grasp the complexity of how our lives fit into the immense orchestration of lives and events that He watches over with love. Our sanity, not to mention, our faith depend on believing that He is good and able to hold all the pieces of history and work them together for purposes that we will one day celebrate.
In the meantime, we hope and pray in the gap that exists between what we know about God and what we do not understand about our world.
Knowing God and trusting Him is everything! Praying in the middle of the night needn’t depend on our ability to make sense of everything and can instead lean on the tender heart of the God, who listens. Do you know His heart? There are many good things to know about Yahweh but the experience of His love and the conviction that He reigns over, above, in and through ALL of life is a gift of peace in the dark and precious laughter in the light. Which is easier, I wonder?
To trust in what happens next or to trust in the One who holds what happens next?
God holds what happens next…and He holds us, too! We can’t know what we can’t know or control all that we wish we could, but we can put our trust in the One whose thoughts and ways are higher than ours.
“Thank You, Father, that You love with perfection, even when I cannot see or measure it. Watch over all our prayers in the middle of the night and help us to feel you with us especially when it’s dark and we are tired. Bless us and fill us with faith in Your good heart. Amen.”
What about you?
Do you know that when you pray, God is always listening…even at 3:00am?
Have you experienced God’s love? Have you felt His tender heart?
Do you need faith in the middle of the night? Strength to pray in the gap?
“It is good to give thanks to the Lord and to sing praises to Your name, O Most High; To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning and Your faithfulness by night.”(Psalm 92:1-2)
Worship
And yet again you have captured something we all experience and brought hope in.
Thank you my friend.
Thank you for this reminder of His sovereign loving wise presence in our lives.