Finding Tme

Several times recently I was forced to analyze my time and create a new schedule for how to spend my days.

Okay, I wasn’t forced so much as I jumped at the chance to create a routine for myself.  And tweak it as needed.  Because I am one of those.  I enjoy a schedule.

A change in season does that to us.  The weather changes and new chores reveal themselves.  Kids return to school and more hours are found in the day to do things, to get things done.  Projects left idling in the last season become priorities.

My schedule is loose, but includes some of the same things every day.  Chores and meal prep.  Exercise.  Devotions and Bible study.  Reading.  Writing.  Kids’ activites.

It is a full schedule, one that keeps me busy but that which has room to wiggle and move, add and take away as needed.  Eventually I am going to have to do some Christmas shopping.  Someday I will have to get my hair cut.

For the most part, the days are filled.  And mostly, I am sticking to the schedule.

But something is missing.

Do you see it?

Time with God.  I am not praying.

I don’t know how that got away from me.  Any good Christian worth her soul knows that prayer time is essential to growing in faith, to spending time wisely, to getting deeper with God.  When we honor God, he honors our lives.

That is not to say that God isn’t honoring my life.  I believe he works through me just as he worked through Mother Teresa.  My activities might not be as well known, but his power in me is there just the same. 

But I haven’t been thanking him.  Praising him.  Asking him specifically for guidance on a regular basis.

When people say “Pray for me,” I do.  When someone shares a difficulty with me, I give that to God right away.  I tell them that I’m praying, and I mean it.  But I don’t do a bang-up job of amassing all those prayers together in one big prayer pile.  Mainly because I have a horrible memory and know that I would miss the opportunity to help others through prayer if left to my own devices.

But also because I don’t carve out enough time to spend with God in prayer.

I believe that I need to.  I believe that God is telling me to do this.  He is leaning on me.  He is showing me the times that I can do this.  I have minutes all day long to do this.  He is reminding me that prayer time need not be hours on end, doing nothing else but meditation in those hours.  I am not a monk.

Although I have to admit that lifestyle appeals to me a little.

So today, I will pray.  And hopefully tomorrow, too.  God is telling me to put that in my schedule, between and among all the other things I have deemed most important this season.  I’m not sure what that will look like.  Likely it will not be hard to fit those minutes of prayer time in.

But I am confident that the result of finding that time will be apparent in my life, and it will be amazing.

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Dear God, thank you for revealing to me my need for prayer.  Please help me to make time spent with you a priority.  Thank you, Amen.