I'm With Nehemiah

Photo by crabchick.


Our pastor, Jim Bailey, is preaching an inspiring sermon series right now about restoration. Not the furniture kind. The soul kind. The life kind. The kind that makes life worth living. (You can listen to his sermons yourself by clicking here and listening to the February 22 and March 1 sermons. Enjoy!) Jim's sermons come out of the book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament of the Bible. I decided to start reading on my own at home, and I came across a funny little phrase I want to share with you. In Nehemiah chapter 1, Nehemiah has just gotten some bad news, and he starts to pray. Part of his prayer in verse 6 says, "let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying..."

Have you ever had a time in your life when you were so overwhelmed or flummoxed by your circumstances that you couldn't think of anything to say to anyone - let alone The Almighty God? So what do you do then? Like the character Sam Baldwin in the movie Sleepless in Seattle, maybe you just "get out of bed every morning... breathe in and out all day long."

I think that's where our friend Nehemiah found himself. Flummoxed and overwhelmed. So when he prayed, "Let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear," I think he meant, "Yes, Lord. Hear our prayers, yes. But also look on our daily lives. When we can barely lift our hands and our hearts to You and we don't have the words to form eloquent prayers. Look with Your eyes on our lives - on our getting out of bed and breathing all day long - and see the prayers our lives have become before You. Let that count. Answer those prayers, too."

What do you think?