Lutherans are blessed to spend the days of Lent in an atmosphere of almost constant focus on Jesus’ willing trip toward the awful cross and His death there.  What a horrible trip He made in order that we might be forgiven of all sins of doing and not doing His will.

Yes, there were so many things going on in February and March that we might feel mentally exhausted and now need to breathe deeply and let down.  As we let down, we may begin again to shift our focus to the chaos in our world, at our borders, at our great divides among our people, deadlines for taxes, moving back North, stresses and responsibilities and seemingly on and on!  Who can continue the focus on Jesus, His death and resurrection?

With all the competing things in our lives, how can we hope to keep our hearts and minds focused on our loving God?  This is a time when prayer really matters!  These stresses and competing attention grabbers have been around since the fall into sin.  Through it all, God has reminded people as He does all through the Bible and for us, especially in Jeremiah 29:11-13,

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for your good, not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.  Then you will call on Me and come and pray to Me, and I will hear you.  You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.”

But we don’t know the plans most of the time, right?  Our part in this prayer is to bring Him our ‘whole heart’, everything we feel, everything we think, everything we say and everything we do!  We can be totally open with Him and pour it all out.  How wonderful and loving is this?  We can be totally ourselves and He wants us to bring it all to Him!

Our loving God who sees, hears and knows us completely.  He loves us as we are and puts His own Holy Spirit in us to make us more and more like Him.  For this, we are eternally grateful.  As we pour out all the things in our hearts and lives, the only thing we really have to give our loving God is “thank you”.   Knowing His love and being thankful is our part.  Can we keep thankfulness and gratitude in our hearts and minds more and more?

Gratitude is a profound, spiritually healthy way to bring us out of the world’s chaos and into the relationship God wants us to have with Him.  The more we can intentionally be grateful to God, the more we can experience God’s joy and hope.  May God touch your heart with His love, and may you experience giving Him your heart’s all as you pour it out to Him in your prayers.

Randy Taylor