Saturday, April 26
Shake yourself from the dust, rise up, O captive Jerusalem; loose the bonds from your neck, O captive daughter Zion.
—Habakkuk 2:1b
These questions can actually keep us from praying, or from believing that prayer is effective. And, even if someone were able to definitively answer the questions, we would doubt the validity of their words. This has been the case throughout the course of history - even when God was talking with the patriarchs and prophets of Scripture.
It's not plausible answers to the questions that will be the proof to us. It's waking up. It's wiping the sand from the nooks and crannies of our lives. God is always speaking to us when we have eyes to see and ears to hear. God has not stopped speaking since Bible times. But, perhaps, we have gotten sleepier. We've gotten so involved in the daily-ness of stressful lives, that instead of hearing God's voice around us all the time, we wait for specific times of prayer and hope we'll get a message from heaven.
But, if we wake up to our lives and cast a glance of awareness around us, as if we were experiencing everything for the first time, a very remarkable thing will happen. Insights from heaven will be revealed to us, scents of God's presence will waft over us, the murmur of the Holy One will move through our soul.
Oh yes, if we wake up to our lives, we will begin to see and hear what we can only now dimly imagine.
O God, when the heavy clouds of doubt keep me from prayer and the pall of sleepiness has overcome my soul, wake me up so that your voice can course through my veins.
The Signposts for April are written by Renée Miller and originally appeared on explorefaith.org in May 2004.
