Journals from the Past

I have written a prayer journal on and off in my life and today I found some of my old journals and had a read through some of the entries. I had to laugh when I found this on 07 September 2005. Today I found a journal entry from 07 September 2005. It was part of a prayer I wrote to God. "Today I want to ask for wisdom--wisdom to know what to do about work and the rest of my life. After flicking through some of the pages, it seems I wasn’t feeling very fulfilled in my job back then either and was looking for a change. It made me wonder if I'm always just going to feel this way? It has certainly been a recurring theme over at least the last 15 years.

On the 25th of September, 2005. "My brain is constantly rushing." No wonder I'm exhausted, it's still rushing, although I do feel like it's slowing down a little bit since I started all the self-analysing and allowing myself to think more.

I know this blog has been a bit like a journal for me and it will be interesting (embarrassing perhaps) to go back and look at these entries a few years from now, but I think I'm going to start journaling again properly as reading through my journal from 15 years ago gave me some great insights into what was important to me then. (Phil, trying to motivate myself to exercise, trying to find a job I really liked and bizarrely feeling really proud when I cleaned the kitchen in one entry). Did I not clean the kitchen regularly??? I have no recollection of that, but I do know I've come a long way on the cleaning front since Phil married me. He is a very patient man.

I read an interesting thought on prayer today as I was doing a bit of research on the prayer for healing that Hezekiah prays in the book of Isaiah. It's too long to explain here but I heard a sermon once about this prayer that has irritated me to this day so I was doing a bit of sleuthing to find out what other people think about his prayer as I don't think I agree with the sermon person or the note by a pastor in my study Bible where I think the sermon person got their idea from, and found some pretty good commentary on it. This quote is taken from an article posted by Westminster Seminary in California. "How might it might change our prayers if every time we offered a prayer to the Lord, we explained to him how that particular request would advance the glory of his kingdom. Imagine a prayer meeting in which someone asks prayer for Aunt Bessie's broken leg. What if the leader of the meeting then said, “Why should we pray for Aunt Bessie's broken leg?” We might be shocked at first by such a question. But the question would encourage us to seek God-glorifying reasons for the requests we make to God. Perhaps if our prayers were focused on what advances God's glory, we would rearrange our priorities in prayer. Maybe we would begin to have prayers that were more spiritually directed to the great issues of God's kingdom. We are called to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness."

This has made me think about the way I pray and I will now have to go away and ponder it some more. I have a feeling it is a profound and life-changing thought and might simplify my rushing brain somehow. There's something freeing about taking the emphasis off of me and what I want and instead putting it on God. The challenge I have today is I now know I'm still looking for the same answers I was 15 years ago. I don't know whether to laugh or cry about that or just celebrate the fact that at least I'm consistent.

My quote for today is from the song, Write Your Story by Francesca Battistelli "Author of my hope, maker of the stars, let me be your work of art." I love this song and it's a great prayer for how I feel right now. I quite fancy being a work of art.

My photo for today is of my reading my journal from 2005. It's such an aesthetically pleasing journal, I want to find another one like it to fill with my new random thoughts.