Bring us back, our Father, to Your Torah, and bring us near, our King, to Your service, and influence us to return in perfect repentance before You. Shemoneh Esrei hashivanu This is from a post that Skip made yesterday, but I thought it was so beautiful in its wording. It’s part of the morning prayers from the Jewish prayer book. The parallel structure emphasizes the parallels between His Torah, His service, and our desire to return to Him in repentance. It also emphasizes two unique roles that He plays: Father and King. I also like that it’s about desire. Asking for forgiveness without desiring to return is an empty request. Asking for the desire to return takes us much further down the path. You can read Skip’s full post where he talks about the word “influence” here.
1 Corinthians 15:58 So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and steady, always enthusiastic about the Lord’s work, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless. There are a lot of times when I feel like the things I do are useless and don’t seem to make a difference. But this verse is encouraging because it says that nothing I do for God is ever useless. I guess an example of this would be the experiences I had a long time ago in college. I’m not sure if I did them for God or if, rather, they were done to me to be used by God. But, whatever the case, they were not useless experiences because God can, and has, used them to touch other people’s lives. He has been faithful to turn death into life. Also, just because I can’t fix a situation doesn’t mean that it was worthless. I’m not meant to fix every situation. That’s not my role. That’s God’s role, if He chooses t fix it. Not doing something because I feel like I can’t fix it is a bad excuse. Nothing I do, if God is at the helm, is useless. It also says to be enthusiastic about God’s work. Sometimes I find myself mentally moaning about the perception of something I should do because I think it’ll be a lot of work, or it seems like something I don’t want to do. An example, sometimes I dread working with people less fortunate than me because I feel awkward or afraid, and I don’t know what to say or do. But, I should welcome these opportunities and dive in enthusiastically. To hold back is pride and fear, and neither of those are things I want to work further into my life. It’s easy to be enthusiastic about the stuff I want to do, but it’s being enthusiastic about the other things that helps me to grow and lets God work more good stuff into my life.