Dear Ones,
May you wake to a day of intentionally giving your attention to the Lord.
Grandson Paul came for supper last night and good to catch up with him. I hope to make stroganoff and cookies and clean etc. today. We’ve had such beautiful days for spring walks.
  As I read through the book of Jeremiah, I see what a prophet of prayer he was. He didn’t just preach to the people about God, he himself, prayed and poured out his heart to God. He tells God what is going on inside of him and listens to God speak. I read Eugene Peterson’s book on Jeremiah, “Run with the Horses”, and he says, “Prayer is the act in which we approach God as a living person, a thou to whom we speak, not an it that we talk about… Prayer is the desire to listen to God firsthand, to speak to God firsthand, and then setting aside the time and making arrangements to do it.”
  How important is the Lord in our life? Does He get our full attention or is he only on the periphery? We have only to observe two people having lunch together at a restaurant and one is continually reading the texts on their phone while the other person, sits there wishing for some heart-to-heart conversation. One time Al and I made a scheduled visit to a couple in our church and when we got there, she was in the middle of baking cookies for us and gave attention not to burn them. When finally done the phone rang and her husband spent the majority of the time casually talking to the person on the other end. We said, since you’re so busy why don’t we come back another time, but they responded that their life was always like that. We wondered did they ever have some face-to-face talk with one another. I think we have probably all done that with the Lord where we are so pre-occupied that He gets only our partial attention.
  Jeremiah was so real with the Lord and he talks to him when he was hurt and lonely, terrified and angry, His life was often at stake as people who didn’t like his message plotted to kill him. I imagine he had some desperate prayers and wanted God’s full attention. I think we could all admit that often our prayers are one-sided with only partial attention on our part but the Lord not only listening to our words but reading our hearts. Let us be honest and authentic with the Lord and give Him our best.
  Challenge for today: Spend 10 minutes in quiet today, just focused on the Lord and sharing your heart.
Blessings on your weekend and prayers and love, Judy