Having gone for a walk in the forest this afternoon we all had to detick when we got home. It’s very difficult to walk in the forest without harvesting a crop that is ready to eat you. The coyotes and bears move away from you but the ticks just love a warm meal. You are that meal. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just the bite but some of them, the really tiny ones, can leave you with a variety of nasty diseases.
This is like spending a day in the workplace. It’s tough doing so without picking up some pretty nasty sins. Jesus is the only person I know of that could mingle with such as us and not come away contaminated. Yet even He felt the need for prayerful reinforcement and thus would spend nights in prayer. I wish I understood what that meant. So often we think of prayer as talking to God but I don’t know how to do that without being repetitious. Just listen to the prayers in church. Each week they are basically the same. The clichés and metaphors are the same no matter who is praying. They are just rearranged and put in a different order. Often times when someone prays for a long time they are usually saying the same thing over and over just using different words. So I am intrigued when I read Luke 6:12, “One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.”
One thing He did not have to do is “detick.” But He did need those hours in prayer so He did not need to “detick.” Meaningful prayer is a fascinating topic most of us need to spend more time pondering
Written by Roger Bothwell on July 9, 2015
Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org