(This repost is from November 5, 2010. It’s by Paul Merrill who writes here every First Friday and was suggested by Joel.)

“My heart has heard you say, ‘Come and talk with me.’ And my heart responds, “Lord, I am coming.’ ” (Psalm 20:7)

That’s a great way to start a day. Or end a day.

David, the guy who wrote those words, preceded those thoughts by saying, “Hear me as I pray, O Lord. Be merciful and answer me!” So God did respond by asking David to sit down and talk. Then in the talking with God, David would get his answers.

How often are we willing to sit down and talk with God? Talk. Listen. (Not just talk.)

A great time to do that might be on your drive (or train ride) to work. Or on the plane to that next conference, when you just don’t feel like talking to the person next to you. God will listen, without complaining. He usually doesn’t talk till you are ready to listen to Him. That’s not always true. Sometimes He shouts at us when we won’t listen any other way. Often He will talk through events in our lives. The “wake up!” variety.

Sometimes we are in a place where God seems silent. It’s helpful to zip down to the end of that Psalm to see how David responded to that situation: “Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.”

Being patient can be really hard. Maybe it’s one of the hardest things we will face. But David urges us to be brave in the face of the unknown. Maybe you’re waiting on a job. Waiting on your daughter to choose her life direction, on trying for a baby or finding a life partner. Or waiting to see how you can make ends meet this month. Be brave. Wait. And talk to God. And listen.

(Today’s repost is from May 11, 2010. It was recommended by Martin and Christine in response my request for memorable posts.)

My parents have two chairs in the living room. One is Dad’s. One is Mom’s.

It is impossible to walk into the condo and find them both just sitting. Sometimes, however, if you are around the house enough, if you are part of the family, she sits down. And then you find the two of them in their chairs.

• You ask one of them a question. They look at each other. They take turns answering. You get the best of both.
• You ask one of them a favor or about later plans. They look at each other. They take turns answering. They try to figure out the answer that is best for each other and for you.
• You come to apologize. They look at each other. One expresses forgiveness. The other encourages you to restore relationship.

They sit in their chairs, by the way, even when no one else is around. They read letters to each other, they comment on television shows, they pray for their family and friends.

It is a comfortable room.

It’s funny.

When we think of Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Father, we almost never think of a living room. We think of a throne room – cold, gold, and austere. We think of fierce-faced warrior gods, slow to smile, quick to condemn.

But when Hebrews describes Jesus finishing his dying work and then sitting down next to the throne, it’s gotta be more like coming home after a hard day’s work than stiff formality.

When we read that Jesus is interceding on our behalf,  I want to see them sitting side by side. They look at each other. They take turns answering. Jesus can’t help talking with His hands, shadows playing with scars. And the Father listens, forgivingly.

It is a comfortable room.

(Today’s repost is from November 8, 2010.  It is a guest post from Rich Dixon who frequently helps me think in the comments. Thanks to Joel for the request.)

I’m challenged by Jon’s recent articles about prayer. For some reason, I thought about show-and-tell.

Remember show-and-tell? Bring an object (or person or pet) to class and explain why it’s important.

Like all good communication, show-and-tell felt vulnerable. You couldn’t simply display the object or write a report. Show-and-tell taught us the challenge and risk of revealing something about ourselves and what matters to us.

I think prayer might be a lot like show-and-tell.

300 words began 2010 with a journey through John’s gospel. We’ve taken a number of side trips, but our ongoing conversation about prayer took me back to John’s opening paragraphs and his beautiful, powerful metaphor: Jesus as the Word.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Jesus is God speaking into the world. Displays and written reports aren’t sufficient because His kingdom isn’t about ideas and concepts so much as it’s about relationships. We can’t just read and think and talk about the words. To really get it, we have to engage with the Word.

In The Message John says, “The Word…moved into the neighborhood.” He wants to get to know us over the backyard fence.

Jesus is God’s way of being vulnerable, taking a risk to show and tell us the essence of who He is. God communicates Himself to us—His nature, His character, and His purposes — through the simple, powerful process of show-and-tell.

Show-and-tell included interaction, but the questions and discussion were prompted by the starting presentation. It didn’t make sense to blurt out reactions before you watched and listened and understood what the speaker wanted to communicate.

Hmmm … show-and-tell. Watch and listen, learn what the speaker thinks is important about himself, then comment and ask questions.

Could that be what God had in mind?

That’s how our pastor ended the sermon yesterday. After talking about serving like Jesus served, he said, “It’s not complicated. It’s not easy, but it’s not complicated.”

I confess. While everyone else was standing for the closing prayer, I kept writing so I would remember that.

In the class I teach on Sunday mornings and in the small group we’re part of on Saturday nights, we spent time this weekend talking about the command that Jesus repeats from the Old Testament. A teacher says, “So, rabbi, what’s the greatest command?”

(This is a repost from October 11, 2010. Thanks to Joel for this response to my request for most memorable posts of 2010.)

It’s a good question, I think. If you want to keep one, it makes sense to know what the biggest one is. If you want to start somewhere in doing what God says to do, it makes sense to know what the biggest one is.

So anyway, the teacher asks.

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

It is very possible to take what Jesus says, what he in fact quotes from a couple places in the Old Testament, and to make it very complicated. We can break it down into a study of what the heart is and what the soul is and what the mind is and what the strength is. We can talk about what might count for each of those. We can analyze what Jesus is saying about how the self is divided (or not).

But I’m pretty sure he wasn’t trying for complicated. “Throw yourself completely into loving God. “

It’s hard, not complicated.

(This is a repost from August 16, 2010. Thanks to A.J. for this response to my request for most memorable posts from the last year.)

It happened again last week. Someone said, “I know I should spend more time in my Bible.” After scolding him for yelling at himself rather than celebrating the fact that he is spending time with a small group of people talking about the Bible, I realized that lots of people share that same feeling.

I could scold you, too, for thinking that reading the Bible is something you ought to do (rather than thinking it is a way to meet someone). I’ll save that scold. For now, here are some ways to approach reading.

1. Open the book. Read whatever is where your eyes fall on the page. Sometimes, you get surprised by what you see. It can break up routine reading.

2. Turn to Psalms. Read 80-85. If you read 5 psalms every day, you can read the whole book through in a month.

3. Read Proverbs 16. If you read one chapter a day, you can read most or all of the book in a month.

4. Start reading Mark. Wherever you go today, read more. Decide that you will read the whole book in the next two days.  Print out the pages from Biblegateway.com so it looks like a blog post instead of a Bible.

5. Turn to Philemon. Read it out loud. It’s a letter, written by Paul to a friend whose slave had run away and ended up with Paul. Find the emotion that one friend might use in talking to another friend. Pretend that you are one of those narrators in a Ken Burns documentary.

6. Read Hosea. Imagine buying your wife back from a pimp. Really.

7. Decide to memorize Matthew 5-7. You’ve memorized Jabberwocky and the lineup of the 2001 Mets. Why not a famous speech by Jesus?

8. Write a blog translating Bible passages into life. It makes you think. but 300wordsaday.com is taken.