Wednesday, October 01, 2008

The Flower, My Prayer

Praying tonight I find encouragement through flowers I bought for Tanya.

I was looking for a way to express my desire for God's presence to open up into students' lives and spread through campus. I was reflecting on the campus revivals in the 1960s and 1970s where huge gatherings of college students met. They began a normal service that soon turned into the bustling business of God moving through hearts and lives. The common factor in these stirrings of the Spirit was public confession of sin, repentance, and encouragement in the Spirit.

While these clouds thoughts float around in my head I look to these flowers and see this opened flower. I immediately know that this flower is my prayer. There is no other way to express it. I feebly say something like, "May students' lives powerfully open up to display your glory in them like this flower."

These words, however, hardly express the complexity of my desire. Time is involved. Just yesterday this blossoming flower was like its companion you see just behind it ... closed, shielded, and not too impressive. Through time God's glory opens up and students look different.

Students ask me to pray for their unimpressive, bad choices and temptations. They don't see the beauty God has waiting to burst out! If only they would see it, Lord, and wait like this flower responding to the divine will so perfectly! Get through this testing and you will see what God has in store.

They desire to fulfill your purposes for them not knowing that their situation is being redeemed through God's own presence in their life. It will come in the season it comes.

My prayer is this flower, spreading its arms toward its creator, screaming of its maker with every breath, responding to His gentle unseen promptings, and giving off the fragrance of Christ. Interesting prayer indeed.

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