If I were a camera, I would be out of focus. Pray for adjustment?
But, fuzzy photography aside, I learned something really wonderful the other day. In New Testament last week we went through all of the worship in Revelation as a class. This means that we spent 45 minutes participating in a type of liturgy followed by some songs of worship. During the liturgy, we read over Revelation 8:4: "...and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel." This is where it hits the bone. This illustration has been an incredible blessing to me. Incense is used for it's beautiful smell. The implication is that for the incense to mix with the prayers rising from earth is to create the most beautiful and appealing of smells. My prayers are like incense to God Almighty. How poetic to imagine words of desperation, praise, thanksgiving and petition having a particular smell.
Later that night I was at After Dark (a student run chapel offered on Wednesday nights), and I tried to imagine my prayers as incense. I was feeling weighted and anxious and I decided to offer each of my anxieties up to the Lord separately. I began to pick them out: school, certain social situations, plans for the future, etc. These floated lightly and quickly up to my creator. As I dug deeper into my heart, however, my anxieties became heavier and the "smoke of my anxiety" seemed to hang in the air around me, refusing to rise. This is when I realized that I have not been truly trusting God with all that I have been dealing with this semester. I have been hanging on to these anxieties, afraid to relinquish control. Here is where the cranky comes into play. As the small situations in my life become more pressing (school, etc.), the buried frustrations of the deeper and larger situations are becoming manifest.
I don't exactly have an answer yet, but I do have prayer that I know is reaching the nostrils of He who gives me life.
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