My Window of Prayer

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Lorita is a Specialist Case Manager, working at a hospital in Pretoria, South Africa.  She loves dancing,  promotes dance in worship contexts, and represented SA at the Dance Gymnaestrada in Switzerland in 2011.

Kalle Løchen, Woman by the Window

I have been struggling to make time/find time to pray and for hearing God.

My environment at work is very toxic and I also feel like a rat in a wheel every day – running the whole day and at the end of the day, feeling like I have achieved nothing purposeful.

So I created my window at work.

This is an actual window for me. I sit facing my window, only my computer screen is in front of me. I can see outside, but no one sees me. My window is about one metre wide and stretches right up to the roof.

On the left side of my window, I see trees with birds and nests in them. There are about three or four huge trees, and they are green, with stems that are yellowish. They remain with this colouring the whole year.

I call this the Left Side. And here I give thanks to God for whatever I need to, in this moment – health, creation, being alive. And Psalm 118:24 comes to mind: “This is the day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (NIV).

On the right side of my window, I see a hill/little mountain with different slopes of smaller trees – sharp, round trees; and I see grass on this hill. But all of this changes as the seasons change and this steep hill can look quite dull at times.

 I call it the Right Side. The side for requests/asking. Let’s take a moment and pray to God and ask him to help us with whatever challenges, difficulties, “uphills” we are facing this moment, remembering 2 Corinthians 12:9–10: “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (NIV).

Then I tilt my head up to the top of the window. I see the sky – it is wide (everywhere), broad. It is deep, with a never-ending depth. It is constant – always there, it may be blue, grey, white, dark – but always there.

I call this Loving. Let us take a moment to just enjoy God’s love for us that is so wide, deep and constant, and enjoy how God’s love covers us every single minute. Enjoy being wrapped in God’s love. Ephesians 3:17–18 expresses it thus: “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (NIV).

Juho Mäkelä, Autumn Clouds