Delivered Again

"My vows to you I must perform, O God;

I will render thank-offerings to you.

For you have delivered my soul from death,

and my feet from falling,

so that I may walk before God

in the light of life."  Psalm 56:12-13

Fasting.  There has been many a Lenten season that I attempted to fast.  Never quite understanding fasting, never quite doing it fully.  I feel though that God is trying to tell me something and I am not getting it.  My sleep is disturbed, visions are being sent into my dreams, my dreams interrupted with wakefulness so that I remember what just occurred.  That is a sure sign that God is trying to reach me.  But I am not getting it.  Something is stirring.  I hear myself speaking phrases that just come out of my mouth as if I never thought of them before and yet they are as true as if I had pondered them for a year.  And yet I still am not sure what God is saying.

At one of the homeless shelters I serve one of the guests and I were talking about fasting.  Of clearing the mind and body of any preoccupation of this world so that we can empty ourselves and open up a channel of understanding.  Complete focus on prayer.  It is hard in my loud house and busy family to get absolutely quiet.  In fact that kids only went to school one day last week which really hampered my prayer time.  Plus I was preparing to help facilitate a retreat and my homework on top of those things in life we call small crisis moments that need pastoral care. 

Prayer must come first.  If my prayer life gets derailed I can not abide in God's will.  If I am not praying I start developing my own ideas and strategies and goals and visions.  Poof, off the path I can fall.  Pray, always and everywhere, unceasing, guarding the thoughts of my heart and mind.  For what we think, we say and what we say, we act upon and others might act upon.  Thought, Word, Deed.  My thought must be of God, the Word guiding my words and then my deeds can abide.

So I am going to fast.  I am going to pray.  I am going to empty myself and ask for the grace of understanding.  My vows I will perform, thanksgiving for every moment, those perceived good and those perceived not good.  For I know my God has saved me, time and time again, beckoning me to a path of righteousness - right relationship - with my Creator, a call defined, a life fulfilled.  Born again this new day.