What are you worried about? - Devotion for 10/7/08

What are you worried about? – Devotion for 10/7/08

Have you ever felt like your prayers haven’t been answered? Maybe you pray and you pray and you pray for something to happen, and yet it never does. Or maybe you pray and you pray and you pray for something to happen, and yet the opposite actually happens. I think we all can relate to the frustration that comes with God answering our prayers in ways that we don’t quite think to be satisfactory. Jeremiah went through something like that a few times. Jeremiah was a prophet (and you thought I was going to say a bullfrog!), and in Jeremiah 32, though the Babylonian armies are advancing, he feels that God has led him to purchase land – a field of a relative. Now common sense told him and everyone else that when you are getting ready to be attacked and laid siege, it is not a good time to buy land. Jeremiah went through with it; however he quickly seems to question why God had him do it. He goes on and talks to God, praising God for how He made the heavens and the earth, His lovingkindness, His great counsel, and His leading the people of Israel, but then He seems to express His concern that the Babylonians are encroaching and preparing to attack the land God had given to His people. Especially, Jeremiah is a little concerned about his recent purchase, and he reminds God that he bought it because God told him to buy it, even though the armies were approaching the city. And God’s answer? “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is anything too difficult for Me?”(Jeremiah 32:27)

God was allowing them to suffer the defeat because the people of Israel, because “they did not obey Your voice or walk in Your law; they have done nothing of all that You commanded them to do,” according to Jeremiah 32:23. However, God goes on to reassure him that after the captivity, He would cause His people to prosper again. I’m guessing the people of Israel were praying to prosper, they just didn’t know they would prosper after the defeat.

I read something yesterday that has really stuck with me, and then feel it confirmed in my reading today. So, below I’m sharing a passage from Meditations of a Hermit, by Charles de Foucauld:

We can do anything by prayer. If our prayers are not answered it is either because we are wanting in faith, or because we have not prayed enough, or else that it would be bad for us if our request were granted, or perhaps God gives us something better than what we ask. But never do we not get what we ask because it is too difficult to get. We need never hesitate to ask God for the most difficult things, such as the conversion of great sinners or of whole nations. The more difficult things are to grant the more we must ask for them, believing that God loves us passionately. But we ask with Faith, constantly, instantly, willingly, and with great love. We may be sure that if we ask thus and with enough persistence we shall be answered and be given the grace we ask or something even better. Let us then ask bravely from God things that seem impossibilities, if they are for God’s glory.