![\"Autumn](\"https://catholicstand.com/wp-content/uploads/Autumn-Jones-Prayer-480x278.png\")
“… for nothing will be impossible for God” –Luke 1:37
Christmas vacation as a graduate student is nothing short of spectacular. No more papers to write, novels to read or tests to study for. For the first time in a while, I had time to breathe, time to think, time to write. Which also means I had time to really pray.
Now I’m not talking about daily “Thanks, God…” kind of prayers – though those are certainly important. Rather, I’m talking about deep, intimate conversations with God. The ones that turn your world upside down. The ones that make you question every action, every thought, every emotion. And, perhaps most importantly, the ones when you hand over your deepest desires, your deepest joys and your deepest concerns.
Graduate student, full-time employee, full-time parent or full-time busy individual, our prayers can quickly become something of habit or that which is given half-a-thought. We run through the routine, but the depth isn’t there. We rarely stop to simply sit in His presence. Less often do we come to Him with our greatest fears, dreams, worries, expectations and joys. Because, after all, we are busy, successful, functioning adults.
It is tempting, especially when we are busy, to think we can figure it all out on our own. We fall into a routine, and we lose the depth of our prayer. We forget, or we chose not, to invite God into the deepest parts of our lives. We forget how much we need Him. To need is to be dependent. It is an admission that maybe we don’t have it all figured out. Perhaps we do need God to be at the center of our lives to help us sort through the muck and the chaos.
What better example of this than the Christmas story? Think about Mary. Here she is a hard-working, young teenager in love with her spouse-to-be. She is a faithful woman, and she certainly trusts God. Yet, one evening an angel appears to her, bringing news that she will conceive a child, and that child will be the Son of God. Not only that, but the angel proceeds to tell Joseph that his beloved is now pregnant with a child that is not his. Can you imagine how Mary and Joseph felt individually and as a couple? In one pivotal moment, God turned their world and everything they knew upside down.
But they did not abandon God, and they did not abandon each other. Rather they dove deeper into prayer and deeper into trust. They handed over their lives for His will and they were certain that everything would be okay with God at the helm. They believed “nothing will be impossible for God.”
What if, meditating on the Christmas story, we too realized that nothing, not one single thing, is impossible for God? What if we actually brought before Him every thought, question, decision in our lives?
What if we lived a little more like Mary and Joseph?
© 2013. Autumn Jones. All rights reserved.
2 thoughts on “Prayer: Nothing Impossible”
Pingback: Technology Turned Against Kiev Protesters - BigPulpit.com
Spot-on piece. I found writing a doctoral dissertation to be a very interesting spiritual exercise for reasons that align with what you’ve written– it does not replace deep prayer, of course, but it can become part of it and informed by it.
When I was trying to “figure it out on my own,” it was a form of hoarding it from the Lord. I had to learn that I not only needed Him, but that He wanted “in” to the dissertation, and that the opportunity to write not only a dissertation, but the one I was writing, was a gift from Him. So apart from my daily prayer, it was a matter of allowing prayer to be a part of thinking through and writing that dissertation as well as learning to offer up that dissertation– and all of my hopes, my joys, my sorrows, my insecurities, my dreams, and my fears– in prayer.
It’s also important to remember that it’s about living an integrated life– when we are busy, successful, functioning adults, we not only forget that we need God, but we compartmentalize our lives. When prayer becomes routine, we forget its rhythm.