Behind...

I think it's so ironic that we talked about time management today in class. I am so behind right now, it's just getting harder and harder to catch up. 2 chapters in World Civ. and Biology, almost an entire book behind in Ministry. Could it get any worse? Yeah it could, but still. So that's gonna be my goal for this weekend, to catch up... with reading. 

On to my real post, I've doing a lot of reading on prayer this week (yes I should have already done most of this reading last week, but let's not judge). Today I came across an odd passage in the book "Working the Angles," by Eugene H. Peterson. He says about beginning events with prayer, 

"... the irony in all this is that by putting prayer in the apparent first place we contribute to its actual diminishment. By uttering a prayer to 'get things started' we legitimize and bless a thin and callow secularism- everyone is now free to get his or her own way without thinking about God any more. 'That at least is out of the way; now we can get to the important things...We have pleased God with our piety and are free to get on with the things that concern us." 

I've talked to my mom about this before, and she actually got quite angry with me (because I went about telling her the wrong way). So I'll tell the story, one day my family and I were about to eat dinner, and my mother asked me if I would pray for the food. 

I said, "No I don't really want to."

She asked, "Why not?"

"Because it wont be genuine," I said. 

She then proceeded to get very angry about not wanting to thank God for our food, and such. But the thing is, I wasn't about to change my mind. We are talking about praying to the Almighty here. The Name above all Names... all that jazz. I wasn't going to chance my talk with Him not being true, or real. I have a reason, for me I need time to stop and think about what I'm going to do, I need to center my mind, so my only thoughts are about God. There is a God up there that smite-ed Ananias and Saphira because of a lie, I'm not going to say a little cupcake prayer. I will thank God, when I mean it, not because it's tradition. 

I realize this was a horrible time to bring this up, but I feel like we take so much away from prayer by just saying..."rub-a-dub-dub thanks for the grub Amen." So I'm going to work on it, because thanking God for our food is something we need to do. There are so many people that have absolutely no food, or less than I eat in a meal for the week, but in that same regard, I want to be really thankful, otherwise I'm a liar. And we all know what Revelation 21:8 says...

-Andy