A lesson from a stream in a desert

As you all know I have been pretty busy the last couple of months. Well I have to admit other than this blog, there is another major thing I have allowed to be cast to the wayside, that being my relationship with God.   Don’t get me wrong I do find Him to be a very important supportive guide in my life…Though it’s been a struggle to remember He too deserves my attention. I received a “wake-up call”l the other day when I spent it sleeping right through it.  When I officially woke up it was 7pm, and felt so depressed that I had allowed myself to completely waste my day like that.

So In an effort to avoid remaining in this state, I blew dust off a devotional book" Streams In The Desert " given to me a few Christmases ago and turned to the page which correlated to the month and day I was on. To my surprise that specific page was about God blessing His children with rest! In the first part, the book mentions a story about Elijah(1 Kings 19:4-9)

The second part was this poem,

“I’m too tired to trust and too tired to pray,
Said I, as my overtaxed strength gave way.
The one conscious thought that my mind possessed,
Is, oh, could I just drop it all and rest.

Will God forgive me, do you suppose,
If I go right to sleep as the baby goes,
Without questioning if I may,
Without even trying to trust and pray?

Will God forgive you? Think back, dear heart,
When language to you was an unknown art,
Did your mother deny you needed rest,
Or refuse to pillow  your head on her breast?

Did she let you want when you could not ask?
Did she give her child an unequal task?
Or did she cradle you in her arms,
And then guard your slumber against alarms?

Oh, how quickly a mother’s love can see,
The unconscious yearnings of infancy.
When you’ve grown too tired to trust and pray,
When overworked nature has quite given way:

Then just drop it all, and give up to rest,
As you used to do on mother’s breast,
He knows all about it-the dear Lord knows,
So just go to sleep as a baby goes;

Without even asking if you may,
God knows when His child is too tired to pray.
He judges not solely by uttered prayer,
He knows when the yearnings of love are there.

He knows you do pray, He knows you do trust,
And He knows, too, the limits of poor, weak dust.
Oh, the wonderful sympathy of Christ,
For His chosen ones in that midnight tryst,

When He told them, “Sleep and take your rest,”
While on Him the guilt of the whole world pressed-
You have trusted your life to Him to keep,
Then don’t be afraid to go right to sleep.”

-Ella Conrad Cowherd

After reading this, I felt a sense of peace knowing He understood my neglect.  Now I’m not saying it’s ok to ignore God…heavens no! What I would like to get across is that when we feel like our hectic lives have strayed us away from our attention to God, He hold no contempt towards us.  AmazingJ