From Tuesday 17 April 2012, reading Colossians 4:2-4:
Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving; praying at the same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned; that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak.
“Devote yourselves to prayer” it says. And it talks about praying for “them” and for doors to open and words to say.
So my first thought was, skip the journaling and pray. Pray for the requests in my prayer journal and especially pray for Mei Mei and her team in undisclosed parts of the world.
And then I reread the verses (to see if it described more how to pray – you know, get it in my head again before starting my prayers)… And something caught my attention:
Keeping alert with an attitude of thanksgiving.
And suddenly the random verses I had pulled for my current lectio series, the ones that came from the previous study book our ladies’ group did… suddenly they connected with the book we are doing at present. The one about the gifts*. The one about counting to 1,000 gifts because when we count the graces we recognize the graces and when we give thanks then joy comes. And eucharisteo means to give thanks but the root word is charis meaning “grace” and then we find that chara “joy” also comes from that root. And eucharisteo precedes the miracle. And when we count the gifts – the graces – we recognize the graces….
And that’s where it connected. As though again for the first time! When we’re being thankful, looking for gifts – we are being alert – and being alert we see what God is doing and therefore we can know how to pray! HA!
Thanksgiving leads to watchfulness and so together they help us to always be in prayer and to know how to pray!
Oh, Lord, may I be alert with thanksgiving!
*Our current study is the book One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp
[…] mentioned the gift list a couple of times before (namely, here and a bit in here). And after I hit 1,000 gifts I stopped numbering them, I merely started listing […]
[…] to eucharisteo. And when we don’t give thanks nor rightly honor God, there are consequences. Just look at my […]