Search This Blog

Thursday 30 May 2013

The long watches of the night

Ok, I know I'm not off to a great start with my prayer journey. Not many posts yet, and you may be in danger of forgetting what it's all about!
The truth is, I've been struggling to find time to be with God in more than a perfunctory way. Many demands of my time and energy in recent days, and one of the negative consequences of being too busy is that I sleep less well.

For me, lying awake in the small hours is the time when I succumb to guilt. I remember all the things I haven't done, and I think about the ways I wasted time yesterday instead of shifting more things off my to do list.

Where does this guilt come from? For years, I thought it was God speaking to me. It never occurred to me to wonder why he always had such negative things to say in the middle of the night. I think the truth is more to do with the way my mind works - when awake at night I generally feel worse about myself than at any other time.My thoughts turn to guilt more easily that blessing.

I'm learning to remind myself that God is nice, and he loves me. OK, he might have some stern things to say about the way I serve him badly, but he is adept at saying them in ways that build me up, not in ways that grind me down.

The first thing to be done on this prayer journey is to shift away some of the rubbish that gets in the way of my relationship with God. Night time guilt - that's first for the wheelie bin.

No comments:

Post a Comment