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.
Your own prayers
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