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Good morning…

From miles and miles away, she emailed me after yesterday’s post, “I’m All Tangled Up.”  Our heart and head, tangled. Our fear and worry, tangled. Our love and control, tangled. Our anxiety and stress, tangled. Our depression and grief, tangled. Our gray skies and hope, tangled. Our belief and our journey, tangled. We wake toward a light that is not our own, it is the light of joy.

“Oh my,” wrote this longtime reader, “what a wonderful description for where many of us find ourselves in the midst of churches splitting, friends no longer friends, questions about leadership, dismay about decisions and over it all, faith that God is at work in the midst of the chaos, but where is He?”

“What thread do we pull to untangle?” she honestly asked. “Do we just make cuts in the middle but destroy what we are trying to save? Do we worry with this remnant first and then another in our efforts to find answers and peace? Or do we just walk away and mourn? Blessings on you and whomever brought this much needed message to me today.”

“Good morning,” I replied. “These are such important questions to wrestle with with God. As I have a few open hours, I will prayerfully ponder these tangled thoughts and see what wordless prayer cards might emerge. I love your sentence: …God is at work in the midst of the chaos, but where is He? This is the question I will take into prayer for all of us feeling tangled up in the very real conflicts in our world this day. Stay tuned. I’ll send pictures of what God and I create.”

As we form five wordless prayer cards, I sense a deep truth: God is at work on a cellular level.

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Then the cards unraveled into one unifying prayer.

Dear God, please shape our ears with Your guiding voice. Develop our inner eyes to see You everywhere. Extend our tender hands to reach those in need. Create in us the loving mind of Christ, and steady our feet to follow Your lead. Amen.

Just as you don’t know the way of the wind
or how bones grow in a pregnant woman’s womb,
so you don’t know the work of God,
the maker of everything.
In the morning, sow your seed;
and don’t slack off until evening;
for you don’t know which sowing will succeed,
this, or that, or if both will do well (Ecclesiastes 11:5-6, CJB).

As we plant our unique gifts in the fertile soil of each day, we must trust God to grow whatever is needed.

…Sue…