Soaring

This week Kerstin found a passage in the book Deepening your Conversation with God: Learning to Love to Pray (by Ben Patterson) about praying for strength. I thought that I would share some of it with you.

"A week later Dan came home from college -- to wash clothes and eat, as usual -- and we were talking in the kitchen. Okay, I thought, now ask him what he would like prayer for.

I asked, and he answered, "You can pray that I will pray more."

I'm glad I wrote that down in my journal, for not only can I share it with readers, but I am encouraged to keep praying not to give up. That's how Jesus said to pray -- not give up. So often I feel like giving up. There's only one thing I can do when I feel that way: pray that I won't! That is, I must pray that I won't give up praying when I feel like giving up on praying. The very thing I feel week to do will be strengthened in the doing.

In fact, I think there is a kind of "aeronautics" to persistent prayer. Isaiah 41:31 declares, "Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles." I've watched eagles soar in the canyons of the Rocky Mountains. It's a beautiful sight to see them perched atop a cliff, then folding their wings to their sides, throwing themselves into the canyon and plummeting toward the bottom until at just the right moment they spread their wings and are shot back into heaven, gliding on thermal drafts that come up from the canyon floor. I have a friend who is a fighter pilot who told me that eagles have sensors in their nostrils that enable them to know not only the precise moment the thermals are ready, but also in their fall the precise moment they've reached the right speed to spread their wings and be thrust upward.

There is a lesson about persistent prayer -- abandon yourself to God's promises the way an eagle falls into a canyon. My tendency is to scramble up the rocks of life's canyons and just sit there and stew. But in persistent prayer, I can completely throw myself on God's mercy and pray until God acts and I am borne aloft on his power. In the meantime, I am coming to know him better and my strength is renewed."

Is there a place in your life where you feel like you are falling into a canyon and need to be lifted up? My prayer is that we will all be like eagles and soar with God's strength and power.