The View I wanted.

Last month, I wrote about how I wanted to focus less on resolutions and more on five important prayers for this year.  These stemmed out of a growing desire to be intentionally in prayer and to grow in my prayer life.  Before the new year had even begun, I made a few action steps, which I'll share with you next week.  The first was to create a prayer table.

Inspired by this lovely article over at aholyexperience.com, and especially the beautiful photograph of their prayer bench, I knew that I needed a dedicated place.  A place that when I entered it (or technically, sat down to it) I immediately entered a place of hush, a mindset focused on the sacred.  It may not always feel that way in that special spot; it may not always be possible to sit there, but having a regular place immediately sets you in the mindset of prayer.  Daniel prayed regularly at windows facing Jerusalem (Daniel 6:10); Christ, though he was itinerant, always sought a quiet and lonely place.  For mine, I wanted a place to sit.  I have lots of closets, some large, some small, some very odd (the top of a set of stairs, anyone?).  I could create a real prayer closet.  But closets are dark and cramped, and I cannot disassociate them with lurking spiders. No, I wanted a prayer table, one that sat before a window where I could look out and pray.

I knew the window I wanted.  It's view is one of my favorites in the house.  It is the front window in what was our living room when the second floor of our home was our apartment.  I fell in love with our home looking out that window at the changing leaves the fall we moved in.  I watched the seasons change on the boughs of the trees outside.  It's a view of our block, well-kept homes across the street, our little yard out front, a quiet sidewalk.  It's the "pretty" view, the aesthetically pleasing one, though the winter days without snow may not be it's best aspect.

However, there is no room for a table there now.  That room has morphed into our bedroom.  There is just enough space in between that window and our bed for me to walk around and climb in bed.  There's no room for a table, let alone a chair.  And considering the furniture and doors and fixtures in there, a rearrangement isn't practical.  So the consideration began for a different window, a different sunny spot. 

We have a large home with many windows.  It would seem easy to find one I liked, wouldn't it?  Yet with the configuration of this room, the purpose of that one, it left me with little choice.  I ended up in the laundry room.  The view from there looks out on the roof of the addition to the back of the house, which obscures most of the yard unless you are standing up.  Beyond our yard is our slightly derelict garage (the current use of which is solely for the storage of many things, mostly "handed down" to us by previous owners of this house), and beyond that, the alley and our neighbors' backyards, and beyond that, the streets to the west of ours.  To the east (looking out the window I wanted) is an area of town with beautiful old homes.  To the west, the homes are more modest, and many not as well kept.  This is not the view I wanted.

I wanted the prettier view, the more inspiring, the one that makes me feel more at home.  The one with the well-kept homes and graceful boughs, and where, frankly, when the trees are in leaf, we seem a little cocooned behind a veil of green. Somehow, the view out the back reminds me that I live in an area called The Box.  Just beyond the trees, just barely out of sight, is the store where two police officers were gunned down.  Down my alley sometimes comes a woman who scrounges through our trash cans for things to salvage.  If it's not her one day, another it's an older man.  But this is the window where we had space to set a table, where I could easily plug in my computer should I need it or the Bible software on it.  And this is where I can see the most of the neighborhood where I live and for which I feel called to pray.  I wanted the one, and I got the other.

But life is like that, isn't it?  We might want something, but we find our path leading elsewhere.  Proverbs 16:9 says, "The mind of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps." Whether you take this to mean that the Lord will perhaps take you on a very different path than you might have planned for yourself, or that perhaps He will simply guide you along each of the steps it takes to reach your goals, I think it points to one very important truth: it is the Lord who moves us forward, who will direct us in the way we should go.  Whether we set a certain endpoint in our sights but find our path moving to the left of it, God is there, directing us towards Himself and towards His will.  Whether we simply ask the Lord to take us on a journey in faith, if we set out like Abraham with a general idea of direction and let the Lord guide us, He is there.  Is my table at the back window a divine appointment?  I don't know.  But I see how it better meets His calling on my life at this moment.  My view at my prayer table shows me how I must pray; it reminds me that I am praying for my neighborhood, not merely myself.

I've been able to sit at my table regularly for more than a week now.  One glorious afternoon, I had the window open and listened to bird song, funky bass beats on car stereos, traffic gliding past, and random conversations walking down my alley.  Now when I am praying to love my neighborhood, I am looking right at it. 

I don't always get to pray there.  Sometimes, it's overwhelmed with the laundry, the primary (secondary?) purpose of that room.  You saw it's state yesterday.  It's a give-and-take.  Sometimes, the laundry is neglected so that I can pray.  Sometimes, when I've actually caught up on the piles and piles of clothes, those piles spill onto my prayer table, shunting me down to my messy dining room table.  (Yes, I lack a certain something as a housekeeper, don't I?  I'm becoming rather reconciled to it.  But that's another prayer.)  Still, I hope I will be there more often than not. 

For now, it is more important that I find myself at some table, bowing my head in the presence of my Lord.