Weekly Reflection, Sunday, September 9, 2018
By: David May
I met a friend recently at a cool coffee shop on the Northside. Having just moved here from the Northern Neck, frankly, every coffee shop is cool to me. The world I find myself in now is so different than the world I lived in for the past twelve years. Don’t get me wrong; I’m eternally grateful for the gift of those twelve years, and I’m so glad to be here now. For one thing, living here, I can just jump in my car and see a dear friend who I’ve known for thirty years. And get to be in a cool coffee shop to boot!
Anyway, as you can with a dear friend, we talked about everything: our lives, work, worries, hopes, the city of Richmond, the nation, the world. Everything, with plenty of horsing around too.
I don’t remember the exact details of what I was saying, but it had to do with trying to understand this new season in life, this new time, this new place. I said, ‘I don’t really know the why of why I’m here. I’m fine with that. But I wonder.’ And my friend (the way he does sometimes) closed his eyes hard and breathed deeply and said, ‘God is praying for you. Right now.’ And then he leaned forward and said, ‘because that’s what God does. God is praying for you.’
I suppose we’re not in the habit of thinking something like that. But it’s true. In a spectacular, radiant moment, the Apostle Paul wrote, ‘for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words’. Whatever it is, whatever is going on in our lives; whatever is raising itself up for us to consider or run from or rest in, God is right there, right now praying for you.
As we are making a new beginning together, and as we are occupied with all the things there are to do, it is worth remembering, that it is not all up to or on us. You don’t have to do everything to make sure that everything happens well. Please remember, God has God’s own work to do too. God is praying for you, right now, for your life and for the flourishing of all of our lives. Rest in that, God’s grace-filled place for every new beginning.