Prayer column for March 2014

Expecting the unexpected

You may not have heard of Charlestown Meadows – fields by Buck Lane on the lower edge of Baildon about to be built on – unless you’re an avid reader of the Telegraph & Argus.  It’s council-owned land, and they are putting in infrastructure in the expectation, or hope, of attracting private enterprise.  So it did, early on, in the guise of travellers’ caravans, but they can’t have filled in the right forms and were turfed out, leaving behind them the usual jetsam of their presence, including, to my surprise, a towelling dressing gown which still graces the approach road to the site.  It caught my eye and I did a rough and hasty sketch of it one afternoon.

Why?  And what’s this got to do with prayer anyway?  Well the ‘why’ is simply that it caught my eye and seemed bizarre enough to note.  And the prayer connection is that it occurred to me afterwards that we don’t do enough if it – I mean we don’t do enough of noting the bizarre, the unexpected, the unusual, especially in unlikely and out-of-the-way places.  Because that’s where and how God often seems to choose to work in response to our prayers.  So we may miss his answers and toss them aside as insignificant flotsam if we’re not watchful.  Perhaps I should have done a more careful drawing.

Roy Lorrain-Smith

A prayer for each week

Lord of the obscure, as well as the under-your-nose obvious, please open our eyes to see what you are doing in Bradford North, that we may support your work and glorify your name, through Jesus.  Amen.

Lord of jobs, and fields, and industry, and prosperity and harvest, who loves to give richly through earth’s bounty, please may we respond to your generosity with thankfulness, and work wisely with it.  Amen.

Lord of the unexpected and surprising, calling unlikely people in out-of-the-way places into your service, please help us to discern your hand and support your work, as you lead, through Jesus our Lord.  Amen.

Lord of the moment, whose Spirit moves mysteriously, now pointing to this or prompting that, please awaken us to his blessed nudging, open us to his fresh hope , and arouse us to eager obedience.  Amen.

Lord of all life’s jetsam and flotsam, which to us may seem but worthless waste, please work your miracle of recovery on our rejects and wreckage, that our failures may become a fanfare of your glory.  Amen.

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