by Hiram Evans
Psalm 32
Reflection—v. 6 ‘…let all who are faithful offer prayer to you.’
One time, I was at the doctor’s office, and I felt like the doctors and nurses were mean to me. I told them I was on drugs and when they actually saw the drugs in my system, they were like, ‘Get him out of here; he’s nasty!’ But God wouldn’t do something like that. It angered me when they wanted me to get out. It hurt. People can be really mean. But when Jesus is speaking to us in parables, he’s breaking things down in a different way and sends a different message. Jesus is encouraging our words to become actions. He’s making things happen. And Jesus wants us to be near him—he wouldn’t tell us to go away. Sometimes when I’m praying, I think God might say to me, ‘Well, Hiram, you’re doing things you said you were going to do, but you’re also sometimes going away from what you say.’ Sometimes I feel like I’ve got the faith that God gave me, but then when you go back out on the streets, or back out at Catch-Out Corner, your mind can start to wander and you only see the things that God’s not going to do for you. But as we often talk about here in Bible Study, God loves the people who hunger, and the people who are sleeping under bridges—he loves us, whether we make mistakes or don’t, he loves us! Because, the truth is, we’re going to goof up sometimes. We goof up just about every day. The thing with me is that I’ll pray and then the devil will intervene with my mind. So, how do I keep that same prayerful mindset out on the streets? How do I change my heart to be right as well as my mind?
Prayer: God who loves us, in this season of mindfulness, let my heart be turned to you, wherever I am.