Ponderings

Devotionals, prayer & insights from my Bible reading

Erasing Thorns (Prayer Devotional for the week of August 19, 2012)

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My kids like to doodle and sketch during church, and I don’t mind because it keeps them quiet (most of the time, but not always – as those who sit around us regularly can attest, but I digress …). Recently, one of the little guys decided to draw a potted fern that was on the stairs in front of the stage.

He carefully sketched each section of the ornate planter but paused before beginning the greenery. He leaned over and whispered, “I’m just going to draw a different plant.” I mouthed back OK, and glanced over occasionally to watch his progress. He began with some graceful, swirly strokes, and as he filled in the lines with leaves here and there, it began to take on the look of an ivy. Then, he added a few sharp triangles along the vines and filled them in hard and black. Thorns. He drew a while longer, and then stopped to examine his work.

Methodically, he went back through the drawing and erased every thorn. He began drawing flowers in their places. As I watched him, I thought to myself: If only it were that easy!  If only we could simply erase the irritating, painful interruptions in life and replace them with loveliness. If only we could just do away with the sharp hurt that pricks our hearts.

How often do we sit and fume, dwelling on the thorns in life? We have figurative pencils in our hands, and we press harder on the page, scribbling the thorn until it gets darker and more prominent. Eventually, we forget the rest of the picture that God is trying to draw for our lives, because we are so focused on that pesky thorn!

Like the Apostle Paul’s experience in 2 Corinthians 12, God may not completely erase the thorns in our lives. Those painful times can teach us important lessons. We can either let the thorns get the best of us, or we can take Paul’s example and willfully decide to praise God, anyway. We can turn those thorns into flowers by the way we choose to think about them. We can even thank God for the thorn (that’s a difficult one, I know!) because walking through the experience with him draws us closer together.

Encouragement and a challenge (Prayer Devotional for the week of August 12, 2012)

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Most of us are probably pretty familiar with Paul’s story. He’s the one who used to be called Saul, a high-ranking Jew and adamant persecutor of Christians in Jesus’ day. He had a miraculous encounter with God by way of a blinding light and voice from above, and he turned his life over to Jesus. He became a renowned missionary and penned roughly half of the New Testament through his heartfelt letters to the early church.

Although Paul accomplished a lot – arguably more than most of us will ever achieve in our lifetimes – he did not do all of his ministry solo. During much of his mission work, he had a partner named Barnabas to work alongside him. In fact, Barnabas was the one who introduced Paul to the apostles (who were, as you can imagine, afraid of him) after his conversion (Acts 9:26-28).

One of the things that I think is so neat about Paul and Barnabas’ ministry is that they shirked recognition; instead, they sought to train new leaders to follow in their footsteps and pave their own paths in ministry. Paul ended some of his letters with requests to encourage leaders in the local churches, and he and Barnabas commissioned new missionaries (Acts 12:25).

Barnabas’ real name was Joseph (Acts 4:36), but everyone called him Barnabas because it meant encourager. I can think of a few monikers people have assigned to me over the years (smart-aleck, hard-head, goodie-two-shoes … but encourager? I’m not convinced if that one fits.) One of the most reassuring things to me about Paul and Barnabas’ ministry was that neither of them were perfect. Sure, Paul had extensive training in Jewish customs and teachings, and Barnabas apparently had a gift of encouragement, but at the end of the day, they were just regular guys.

What’s keeping you and me from being like Paul and Barnabas? What can we do to be more encouraging toward the people we encounter day-to-day and more forthright about our faith in Christ? Being a “missionary” doesn’t necessarily mean packing up and going to the far reaches of the globe (though it could!). It could also mean representing Christ in your own backyard, right here in our hometown. Are you up for the challenge?