Praying To Recognize and Experience The Freshness of God's Faithful Love Today

 I have a windowed-in balcony attached to my apartment.  I use the space mostly for storing office supplies and the cases of monthly meditation booklets as we print them off. 

However, I recently cleared out some unnecessary items from there and for the past few days I’ve been enjoying sitting in front of the open window in the morning on these warm days with the fresh air coming in the window. 

I never tire of looking up and down the Fraser River with all its activity and also enjoy the wide expanse of the sky. I can get the same view from the living room windows just 6 feet away but I get fresh air and lovely breezes when I move just these few feet to this balcony space.

In the evenings it’s the coolest part of the apartment so I spend a while reading here before I go to bed. I hang my head out the window to get cooled off and have a look at the expanse of the night sky out there. 

The moon crosses the sky at various times depending on the seasonal cycles and the lights up and down the river, the bridges that everyone around here are familiar – Port Mann, Patullo, Alex Fraser bridges – all easily visible just as I sit here.  I am truly blessed to live here.

Sitting here in the freshness today reminded me of those wonderful verses in the Bible from  the book of Lamentations. I read the words in a version I don’t often consult. They were simple and lovely.

But then I choose to remember God, and this is my hope: The Lord's love never comes to an end. He never stops being kind to us. Every day, we can trust him to be kind again. We know that he will do what he has promised to do. ‘He is my Lord,’ I say to myself. ‘He is the reason why I can hope for good things.’ The Lord does good things for people who wait for him. He is kind to everyone who looks for him. It is good when people continue to hope. It is good when they quietly wait for the Lord, because he will save them.  Lamentations 3:21-26

Thank you God that we have a choice today, that we can be filled with the joyful remembrance that you are with us and we can be at home in Your loving presence.  It’s wonderful to know that your love never comes to an end. Your never stop being kind to us. Even though we don’t know what this day will hold we know we can trust you to be kind to us again in the middle of it all.

We are weak and fallible human beings so the promise of never ending kindness really is such good news.  Help us to do our part to look to you for help and saving and healing and forgiving – whatever we are needing for what is going on inside us or around us.  That’s our part, to humbly look to you rather than simply responding to what’s going on or trying, in our own way to make things work the way we think they should.

We’re also grateful that you can be trusted to keep your promises. You do good things when we walk with you and wait for your plan to unfold. Would you help us to do that today and not run ahead with our own shortsighted ideas of how things should be and what we should do.

So Lord, we just want to be simple today and look for you in each set of circumstances where we find ourselves. Give us eyes and ears and hearts that recognize and acknowledge your kindness. Give us patience to wait for Your help in all things rather than as we just said, blundering forward with our own flawed ideas. Give us quiet hearts that are assured that you will save us and always be with us going forward so we can do the waiting with peace and joy in our hearts. Amen