“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
(Psalm 37:40)
God wants to give us so much more than we can even think or imagine! He’s ready and willing to bestow His goodness and blessings upon us. Deep down we know that, and in fact we make our most intimate prayer time with Him sort of like a trip to Santa’s lap. We sit down, maybe listen to some worship music to get in the mood, and then we bombard Him with our requests. As long as our list includes other’s needs and not just out own, we feel justified. We feel pretty good.
I’ve been volunteering at a nursing home this past year. My heart’s desire is that God would love through me, right into these precious elderly people. Some of these dear saints have no family or friends to visit them, so all I want to do for them is to make them feel loved and appreciated. Some of them have raised families and sacrificed all their time and money into their children, only to be abandoned in their old age.
The first time I went to the nursing home, I was helping the residents back to their rooms after an afternoon of movies and popcorn. One lovely white haired woman seemed to take a liking to me. She specifically requested that I personally take her back to her room. My job was actually to line her up in the hallway along with all the other residents and wait for the elevator, and then the activity director would help them all get to their rooms, and I would sweep the floors and clean up the kitchen. But this woman absolutely insisted that I be the one to take her. I asked the activity director if that would be ok, and she consented.
So I was standing alongside this woman, feeling rather proud that I was handpicked for this privilege, when suddenly she turned to me and asked “Do you live around here?” I assured her, that yes, I was a home grown product. This seemed to satisfy her curiosity. A few minutes later she turned to me again, and asked if I lived around here. I said yes, I did. Then a few minutes later…well, you can probably guess, she asked if I lived around here. Guess who didn’t feel so special anymore? I never should have told my husband about that, to this day teases me with that one. Whenever I forget where I put something, he’ll say “Do you live around here?” Heheh.
The next weekend I participated in game day at the nursing home. We had a fun time playing a game which gave each of the residents a chance to share some of their personal stories. At one point during the game, the director asked which kind of pies were their favorites. Several of the residents piped up with “lemon meringue” and “banana cream” among a few other flavors. They looked so happy when they were thinking about their favorite pies, that it really got to me. I didn’t know how long it had been since they had a really good piece of pie, but I decided right then and there to bring pie with me at some point in the near future.
The following week, we played ‘Outburst’ in the game room. I was ‘Vanna White’ for this particular game. It was my job to write the residents answers to the questions on the board. After the game ended, I erased the board, and wrote down about ten different kinds of pies. I told the residents that the following week I would bring in two pies from a local bakery for them to enjoy (remember, I wanted them to have ‘good’ pie, that’s why I didn’t offer to make them myself). I asked a show of hands for each flavor pie. Hardly anyone raised their hands! Where were the folks who only a week ago had practically salivated over banana cream and lemon meringue pies? They had totally forgotten that they wanted pie. At this point I actually had to explain the ingredients in the different varieties of pies to them, even apple!
How many times do we crawl onto God’s lap with our desperate needs and wants, only to forget what we asked for? Can’t you just see how all of our pressing prayers look to God, when a week or two later we have forgotten what it was we wanted in the first place. We no longer want the same things we wanted a few weeks ago, now we want something else. And then we wonder why God isn’t answering our prayers.
Most of us probably don’t have dementia (though some days I think I do). We have no excuse for our forgetfulness. God is just waiting to hear what it is we really want. He knows what we want, but He wants to hear it just the same. And what He’s waiting to hear is not the material things we want, or to hear about our cravings or fantasies. He wants to hear what we want from Him! He wants to be reminded how much we love Him, and how much we want to please Him. Why does He need to be told all of these things? Because we forget.
