Temporary Relocation

Another peek into my prayer chapel visits:

Tuesday number two of the in-earnest prayer dates began with much greater enthusiasm than Tuesday number two of the modified prayer dates.  I didn’t show up and start chattering away.  I didn’t feel nearly the apprehension as I walked from the office to the prayer chapel as I had a week earlier. 

That is, until I got to the door of the chapel.  A white sheet of copy paper was taped to the door with a sign announcing the chapel was closed until Thursday.  I stared toward Heaven.  Uh, God?  What do I do now? You specifically told me to keep seven Tuesday dates with You…here.  Not at home.  Here at the chapel.  What is this?  Is this a thwart of Satan to throw me off track?  Is he trying to get me to give up in the second week like I did last time?  What is going on?  Is my second “dip” toward cleansing going to be jeopardized? 

Okay so maybe I did start to chatter.  I have no idea why the chapel was closed or what role, if any, Satan played in the timing of it.  Perhaps it was just one of those things.  But I did feel God prompting me to come to my house – and stay in my backyard.  It was a beautiful, sunny day, and just a couple of days before, I’d pulled out all the porch furniture, so I had chairs to sit in and the sun to soak up.

I have to admit that I was a bit cautious driving home.  Had I heard God right?  Was this some sort of trap?  The instructions had clearly been to go to the chapel and pray.  Yet I didn’t have a choice today.  The chapel was not available.  I pulled in the driveway and pushed open the chain link gate that leads to the backyard.  I wiped down a freshly dust-covered green plastic chair and slid into it. 

As I had done the week before, I just took a deep breath and looked around, soaking up my surroundings as I waited for my first God-given clue of what the week’s lessons were to be.  I didn’t have long to wait for the first one.  In between the honking horns and nearby hum of construction, I heard birds singing.  An entire chorus of birds filled my yard and the neighboring yards as well.  I listened to them sing and faintly remembered the outline of a verse:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?”  (Matthew 6:25-26).

I watched the birds perched on the privacy fence and the ones splashing and flapping around the birdbath.  I observed the ones plodding through the yard and pecking randomly through the grass for whatever treasure may be found.  I definitely did not see a lot of worry.  And something else was noticeably absent from my view of the bird convention in the yard. 

Fear. 

Those birds were not enslaved by a bit of fear.  They weren’t afraid to fly or dig or splash or build a nest.  If I’d been a bird, I’d have been afraid to fly into the next yard – what if I accidentally misjudged and flew into a window and died from the blunt force head trauma?  If I’d been a bird, I’d have been afraid to dig in the yard – what if I stuck my face straight into some sort of recently applied yard chemical that burned all the feathers off my head and gave me permanent brain damage?  If I’d been a bird, I’d have been afraid to splash in the birdbath, because knowing my luck, it would not be water I found, but just a mirage, and then all the other birds would have seen me flapping in the empty bath and laughed me out of the yard.  If I’d been a bird, I’d have been afraid to build a nest – because what if a big wind came that night and knocked the nest out of the tree and I’d not yet secure nest-owners’ insurance?

Fear.

My topic of the day.  My next issue in a line of issues to correct before I would be ready to handle a relationship.  After all, how could God trust me to be a part of a healthy relationship if I couldn’t pull myself away from a web of irrational fears?  I’d never be willing to give the relationship a chance, because I’d be forever wondering what might go wrong with it or who might see me fail.

I squirmed in the green plastic chair.  This might not be the most fun cleansing of the seven weeks.