You know one of the odd things about these Coronavirus days is that they seem to rush by quickly and drag on endlessly all at the same time. Each day passes at light speed. I get up, pray, get busy working, look up and it is 8:00 PM.
Yet, through another lens, as I look at the past months, they seem to blur together into seemingly endless days. As we quarantine ourselves away from the majority of the world and social interaction, everything from our scenery to the emotions of our hearts can feel monotonous, dull, lazy, and drearily grey.
If we are not careful, it will begin to affect us spiritually. What do we do when our souls are dreary, tired and joy seems to be hard to locate?
Let me offer a helpful remedy…….PRAY. Can I suggest a tiny prayer that I believe will have a tremendous reward? I have been studying Psalm 51 over the past few weeks. Verse by verse I have been picking the meat off the bones of this wonderful Psalm. David, who is at his seeming lowest due to blatant sin and disobedience prays a simple, honest, but powerful prayer to God in verse 12.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.
Joy is a necessity in the Christian life. God makes this clear. (Psalm 14:7, Psalm 47:1, Matthew 5:12, 1 Peter 1:8-9, Romans 15:13) Paul exclaimed in 1 Thessalonians 5:16 to “rejoice always”. Joy is not a mere possibility, but much more of a given in the life of a Christ-follower. There may be days where we feel it is lost.
Maybe it has been misplaced by our sin and disobedience. It may have been seemingly smothered by sadness or depression. There is always the real threat that we have replaced it with joy in things of this world. David knew that his sin was only a symptom, there was a disease he needed to address. He had lost sight of the fullness and joy in Christ.
On these dreary, hazy, and grey days we pray, like David in Psalm 51:12, for God to “restore the joy of our salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit”
REMIND US: We pray that God would remind us that as His children we ALWAYS have a reason for joy. We remind ourselves of the gospel, the hope of our salvation. We remind ourselves that we were once “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3), but God “being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” (Ephesians. 4-6)
LIFT ME OUT & UP: We acknowledge to God that we may have placed our affections and attention on other less important transient things. (2 Corinthians 4:18) This is a short prayer to ask God to grab us by the collar and get our attention. Pray that God would straighten us out and get our minds on things above rather than the muck and mire of our circumstances. “God, would you lift us out and up.”
Tiny prayer, long days. This means we have no excuse as to why we can’t memorize and pray. It is short and we have the time.