The Daily Unexpected

Each new day brings the unexpected.  We can’t write our days and how they will go any more than the ant can do something so simple as write a grocery list.  We’ve been reveling in small signs of spring—a froth of crocuses, birdsong, and the best, the frog choruses starting again.  Then, this morning, we woke unexpectedly to a couple inches of snow to welcome spring.  Our younger daughter went out on the deck and started throwing snowballs in her brother’s open window, up a story, to wake him up.  He wasn’t pleased.  It’s quite beautiful, but it certainly wasn’t what we expected.  And we just heard that one of the travelers to Cambodia, leaving today, discovered his passport was three days expired.   

Recently I read a small post on how young mothers lack the time to be in the Word, to have devotions.  Yes, I remember the exhaustion and the demands;  I regret thinking I did not have the time every morning to lay the dailyness of my way before the Lord.  Did I actually think I would be equipped for the day, for whatever it did bring, without first having even a few moments with Him who ordained each hour?  We take our daily food for granted; we often think we can go without our daily sustaining power.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer has a good word on this.  He talks in Life Together about the importance of hard work in a day, following the time of coming before the Lord, and the words of Paul to pray without ceasing as a unity of our particular work with the presence of God:  

Thus the prayer of the Christian reaches beyond its set time and extends into the heart of his work.  It includes the whole day, and in doing so, it does not hinder the work; it promotes it, affirms it, and lends it meaning and joy,  Thus every word, every work, every labor of the Christian becomes a prayer; not in an unreal sense of a constant turning away from the task that must be done, but in a real breaking through the hard “it” to the gracious Thou.  Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Col 3:17).  Then from the achieved unity of the day the whole day acquires an order and a discipline.  These must be sought and found in the morning  prayer and in work they will be maintained.  The prayer of the morning will determine the day.  Wasted time, which we are ashamed of, temptations that beset us, weakness and listlessness in our work, disorder and indiscipline in our thinking and our relations with other people very frequently have their cause in the neglect of morning  prayer.  The organization and distribution of our time will be better for having been rooted in prayer.  The temptations which the working day brings with it will be overcome by this breakthrough to God.  Decisions which our work demands will be simpler and easier when they are made, not in the fear of men, but solely in the presence of God.  “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as unto the Lord, and not unto men” (Col 3:23).  Even routine mechanical work will be performed more patiently when it is done with the knowledge of God and his command.  Our strength and energy for work increase when we have prayed to God to give us the strength we need for our daily work.