Today I have the opportunity to share another one of my daughter, Camille’s poems. She wrote this poem during her time serving at the Grand Canyon this past summer. –John
a prayer for the Loud Lord
You are loud here. winds wind through royal blue stone, drowning my breath.
so small. so fleeting. so futile. but the vapor of a whisper.
i don’t need to go anywhere to find you. You are here.
What is the most frequent item I pick up during my prayer walks around our campus?
Mini vodka bottles.
They’re everywhere — three billion of them are sold annually in the U.S. I’ll find them tossed onto the roadside, likely flung from moving cars. But more often, I find them in quiet clusters, tucked into corners of our church parking lot. Every bottle tells a story. Every bottle raises questions.
Why is the most common brand I find unflavored vodka?
Why would someone throw a mini bottle out of a moving vehicle?
Why pull into a church parking lot…just to drink?
Are we the idols? Andrew Noble says, “It is strange to become an idol, isn’t it? It’s hard to wrap your mind around. Yet every day, people are morphing into something like mud. Instead of functioning as images of God, they worship idols and turn into lifeless dust. Life goes wrong when we don’t worship right.”
Weakness in God’s economy: Kirsten shares, “As I consider my heart, my struggle does not come in whether or not I believe that God is able to heal; I believe that God is able to do all that pleases him. Rather, my struggle comes in believing whether or not God is willing; at least in the timeframe I am hoping and praying.”
You can tell a good piece of fruit or vegetable by its color and by its feel. The avocado, though, is tricky. A novice might think that a bright green, hard avocado is the best, but counter-intuitively, the best avocados are dark, with shades of brown, giving easily to the touch. The heart of a growing Christian also gives easily to the touch.
When we seek out counsel, the state of our hearts can resist the very thing we want. A soft heart can turn mediocre counsel into pearls of wisdom. A hard heart will turn the wisest counsel into sawdust.
When was the last time you prayed for a miracle?
Do you ever find yourself struggling to pray boldly in your prayers? I do.
Recently the New Life elders had the blessing of praying for a man with multiple sclerosis. I found myself battling over how assertive my prayers for healing ought to be. Should I be praying more for physical healing, or more for strength and faith as he battles the autoimmune disease?
We hold both of these impulses in prayer. To only pray for the miraculous and neglect the formative aspects of suffering is to fall into the lie of the prosperity gospel…
Today I have the opportunity to share another one of my daughter, Camille’s poems. She wrote this poem during her time serving at the Grand Canyon this past summer. –John
a prayer for the Loud Lord
You are loud here. winds wind through royal blue stone, drowning my breath.
so small. so fleeting. so futile. but the vapor of a whisper.
i don’t need to go anywhere to find you. You are here.
On October 17, 2023, we (my wife Angel and I) released our first book, Trading Faces. With around four million books published annually (one for every resident of Oklahoma!), an author can feel as though they’re contributing a grain of sand to a beach. And there is truth to that! As the Preacher wisely reminds us in Ecclesiastes,
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us. (Eccl. 1:10)
Sign up to get The Bee Hive delivered to your inbox and receive a free 50 Books That Changed My Life (and Might Change Yours, Too) download!
