If my people...

You know this verse, don't you?  It comes up often, especially on these new-fangled word/photography combo-pictures that are becoming so popular on blogs and Facebook.  (I've heard them called memes, but upon looking up that word, I'm not sure if that's the correct terminology or not.)  However, if you haven't seen it somewhere, if you aren't as familiar as I'm assuming you are, here it is in it's full:

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.    -2 Chronicles 7:14

I hear this verse so often.  It may be ironic that I hear it most often around election time.  Its frequency could almost make it into a cliche...

However, it is on my heart.  Earlier this month I published my five prayers for the new year.  At that time I'd committed myself to praying daily.  Oh, and I do.  I pray a little here.  I pray a little there.  I pray every night as I'm drifting off to sleep.  But neither prayer nor the Lord has my full, undivided attention.  I'm always doing something else.  Like dishes.  Or going to sleep.  I fulfill my commitment by the letter but not the spirit of the Law.

And then I read this blog posting from TUMI (The Urban Ministry Institute).  Please, read it.  Go, now.  I don't even mind if you don't finish my own post, if you will read it.


Convicting, yes?  It even has that nifty verse at the top.  But seriously, it hits the bulls-eye on the matter.  It sums up everything in my mind the past few months, except I've not had opportunity to drive a woman to rehab or to help a young man fill out a resume.  (Where can I sign up to be so useful?)  

And then, within a few minutes, there was this dropped into my inbox, Ann Voskamp's call to be a radical Christian right where you are.  You can go read it, too.  I'll wait.

It hits all the questions I've had the past several months.  Maybe the past few years since my active role in ministry in any form has shrunk as my duties at home have grown with each successive child.  I long to minister, to serve the Lord in a tangible way.  I see my children as my first ministry.  Don't doubt that.  I know and feel the importance of their upbringing.  But I don't think I am supposed to hide behind my role as mother, to allow it to become an excuse for not serving in the church in any capacity.  We are called to serve, not just our Jerusalems (our families), but outside the familial bonds as well.

I've felt powerless, useless, and unworthy to serve in my inner city church, to be a student in the local TUMI classes because I don't do such things as Adria Medlen does, that I don't reach thousands of readers and have opportunities to travel as Ann Voskamp does.  I know God has pulled on my heart strings to be in prayer, earnest prayer.  But is that really enough?  It seems so little.  It feels like a cop-out.  But the point that it is hitting home to me is that any and every endeavor should begin in prayer.  It should begin in a time seeking God, seeking His face and His will and His wisdom.  I know that my call at this time is to pray.  But how can I hear any other calling if I am not sitting at His feet, ready to listen? How can I develop His eyes to see what needs to be done and to tap on His power to extend beyond myself and my own means to do it, if I am not spending daily, concentrated time with him?

I'll confess, my first reaction was this: Where will I find the time?

Already, I rise at 4:00am to have study time and to workout with my husband.  The study time is technically supposed to be an hour long with time to pray.  But when you factor in that I nurse my son, do a few toiletries, and change into workout clothes before going to my study, you'll realize I lose twenty minutes there, if I wake up with my alarm.  And then it takes me a good ten minutes before  my head is on straight enough to open my Bible or even think.  The minutes slip away so that I have only a few, and I study.  My children are almost always awake by the end of the workout, or shortly after.  From then on I am running, running, running.  Running to get milk and breakfast, to change diapers, to change clothes, to clean up messes, to provide preschool, to load up the kids to go to our various activities and commitments....  The list goes on, as it always does in motherhood.  Naptime comes and I finally get a shower and then there is food to prep, a kitchen to clean, laundry to fold...

Where will I find the time?  I have that book, "Too Busy Not to Pray", and I know all the advice.  My head pounds it into my heart every day.  And yet, I spent a few minutes on the edge of my couch, rocking my infant son back and forth and thinking, "Where will I carve the time?"

But if His people will humble themselves...

I am His person.  I am His.  I need to humble my agenda, perhaps humiliate it if necessary, and take the time to pray.  Let the dishes rot in the sink.  If I want baggy, saggy camel knees like John, I need to kneel down and do it.  If I want to be known to be reliably praying every day like Daniel, I need to carve out the time and do it.

Will you do it with me?  Are you His person, too?  Have you found the time and the place that is uniquely His?  Will you find the time, make it, carve it out for just Him and Him alone?

Find me next week, same place and time, and I'll let you know how I do.