communication – Be Still…

Ecclesiastes 6:1-9 – Enjoy Life!

Read Ecclesiastes 6:1-9

That old wind Solomon is chasing or dreaming of chasing! The last line is great! “Enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don’t have. Just dreaming about nice things is meaningless—like chasing the wind.”

Before he gets to that realization, Solomon took a bit of a turn down a dark road in this reading. I’m sure you also noticed the enormous amount of (one hundred) children referred to in his lament. With hundreds of wives, he likely had many offspring, so 100 would not have sounded too lavish to be believable!

Nehemiah 3:1-32 – Communication

Read Nehemiah 3:1-32

That was quite a reading! To get the full effect of what was happening in this part of God’s plan, reading the whole chapter at once made sense. You may even want to read it over again so you can truly revel in the magnitude of Nehemiah’s mission and how he chronicled it for us, almost like a memoir.

Can’t you just picture the scene of men working together to reconstruct this critical piece of Jewish history! We’re given so much detail, recognizing many for their efforts. Nehemiah did a great job of recording these statistics for us. For those named, so many more were also dedicating this season of their lives to this project.

Song of Solomon 2:8-17 – Keep the Spark Alive

Read Song of Solomon 2:8-17

Remember how eager young love can be? We don’t need to be young ourselves to experience the newness of love and the tingly attraction of a relationship. After all, each new relationship starts with a spark. How quickly that turns into a flame (if ever) depends on how we nurture those relationships.

We see some fantastic inspiration in today’s passage. Our king is very enthusiastic about his love. “He is leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills.” I remember the first days of my courtship with David. The days between calls or weeks between times we could see each other seemed like an eternity. The anticipation that bloomed made each encounter so much more enjoyable.

Luke 11:1-13 – Prayer

Read Luke 11:1-13

Seeing Jesus praying would be a common thing for those close to him. Jesus would clearly set aside time to communicate with his Father. So it doesn’t surprise me that the disciples would want to know more about it, and how to do it themselves.

You’ll probably recognize a portion of the Lord’s prayer here. Some churches don’t regularly recite this prayer, and other churches do so as routine practice in their worship services. The Lord’s Prayer is the perfect example of prayer for us to follow. There is a longer version in the book of Matthew. Continue reading “Luke 11:1-13 – Prayer”