As I write frequently about Seeing God's abundance rather than viewing the world through some false sense of scarcity, it occurred to me that the one thing that we don't have in abundance is time.

 

We have a finite amount of time to accomplish everything that we see in front of us, and often we are running around so frantically that it seems like we accomplish nothing and time seems all the more scarce.

 

One thing I need to relearn over and over is that the time spent in prayer and meditation is the most important time I spend.  It seems foolish to spend time sitting, apparently doing nothing, when there is so much to be done. And yet the time spent in prayer seems to direct and order my days in such a way that time no longer seems so scarce and the things that are important all get done.

 

I suppose this happens for a number of reasons.  First, I am much calmer and function better when I am resting in the knowledge that God is in everything that I do.  So I am not so frantic and things seem to get do with less redoing and running in circles.

 

Second, the time spent in prayer and meditation reorganizes my priorities and so I make different decisions about how I spend my time.  The more time we spend in prayer the more God's will becomes ours and many things just aren't in the plan anymore.  And lest you think this means this leaves out time to enjoy God's world, part of God's plan is that we spend time enjoying the creation that God gave us.

 

You see, the scarcity of time is all in my head, and in the mistaken thought that I have to accomplish everything.  The more time I spend with God, the more I understand that we are all working God's will -- or better, that God's will is working through all of us and it is not so much what I individually accomplish as what gets done.  You see God has all the time in the world.

 

The summer before my last year of seminary I was a camp nurse.  There was a young girl, a professed atheist who came to question me regularly.  The other nurse working with me was a devout Episcopalian and she was very concerned that we only had the summer to persuade this girl to believe in God.  But I told her that God has all the time in the world.  We just do our part and answer her questions and let the Holy Spirit do its work.

 

By the end of the summer this young girl came to me and asked me to teach her to pray.  That moment has really touched me.  But if she had not come to understand the work of God in her life by the end of the summer, then God would have still been working on her and through her life.

 

It occurs to me know that I had that assurance because my prayer life and time spent in silence were more regular.  It is time to get back to more of it.

 

Lord,

Help me to trust that when I am spending time in silence in your presence that you are still in charge and your work is being done. 

Amen