That was a question that I asked myself recently. By “Him” I mean GOD of course, and my reasons were many. Most of us who are Christians are trained and taught to pray and for the most part we do exactly that. Prayers are a part of our way of asking for forgiveness when we know we have done something wrong and for rejoicing and being grateful for when we have received something or accomplished something that is felt to be right.
I have always prayed and I attribute that practice to having been raised in a home where if you were too sick to go to church then you would be spending the rest of Sunday sick too; making it a seldom Sunday to miss hearing the preacher. We pray at meals and teach our children to say thanks for their “daily bread” and to ask for those less fortunate too. We pray at night to have our soul’s “taken” if we were to die in our sleep and to be watched over at all times. When we do these prayers we do it as part of a ritual and routine and although important is it really meaningful? I would argue as a parent it’s imperative to train through routines the acts of daily prayer and as adults we must actually move onto a real conversation with our Lord.
Conversations are harder and ask us to dig deeper into our faiths of what our lives should be doing. Hard still to be ready to hear the answers and act once given instructions by the Holy Spirit. Our relationship with God is the easiest and yet hardest because of what we might discover in our conversations sometimes scares us, making it all too easy to follow along and say that “Now a lay me down to sleep” or “God is great and God is good” ritualistic prayer. Harder still is to carve out the time for the relationship with HIM as we all live pretty busy lives and sticking to our routines, yes even those deeply rooted in us from childhood are much easier to maintain than to actually step out of the box and start asking some hard questions and really deeply checking in with our Maker.
In all the years that I have captured people, the one’s who were dying were the closest to having a real authentic relationship with God. Having been tasked with the reality of an early passing does indeed change one’s daily perspective. For those of us who are living life without such eminent ending it would do us all good to know that our ends are coming too. We tend to forget that and move through life in a ritual and routine. When was the last time that you asked God a question? Like why am I here right now and what is my purpose? Like where do You want me to go next? Like why am I still doing A when what I think I should be doing is B? Asking him in a real conversation means being willing to hear the answer and my friends, He always answers. Which is why we don’t want to because that could mean getting news that we don’t really want to hear. It might mean we need to make a huge change, it could be an inconvenient truth and of course it could be a pat on the back from an old wise place that we are doing precisely what we are supposed to be doing! In all cases don’t be afraid to have that conversation…drop HIM a line and have the relationship that you were meant to have with Him.
Take Care of YOU!
What questions would you like to ask God? As a part of my Sweet LIfe stories I am collecting from my readers theirs. Drop me a line and send me your stories! I can be reached at alisamurray@yahoo.com
