Resting in His eternal love. By Annie Try

I have had an extraordinary week being interviewed for Radio Mearns,  directing a rehearsal for the Women’s World Day of Prayer, then leading it.  I was completely exhausted by the time I co-led a ladies day at our church on Saturday.  The theme, ironically, was ‘Rest and Relaxation’.

As part of the Ladies Day I led a prayer and meditation journey.  So I relaxed around forty women through slowly reading my script which included walking through meadows, rocking gently in a boat and sitting at the foot of the cross.  This was interspersed with poetic prayers, excerpts from Eddie Askew’s writings and some beautiful Bible readings (some read by the other leader) with many pauses for prayer and reflection, particularly on God’s eternal love. We had a background of birdsong and listened to a few softly played spiritual songs along the way.  As a psychologist, I have relaxed many people before without prayer and Bible verses. But this time, being God-led, it was very special.

It was a great blessing to me, despite the fact that I was reading it and had put it together.  It was a blessing because more than forty of us were thinking about God, praying and absorbed in His presence.  Everyone had been told they could opt out at any time but this lovely collection of God’s ladies from various denominations, and of widely differing ages, simply absorbed His glorious presence.

I could hardly believe how God used that day and how refreshing it felt, even for those who spoke, or played the music, catered for the event, or for us, the leaders of the day.

So why am I telling you all this?  Because I am now renewing and reviving my prayer life by going deeper in relaxing and worshipping God and simply wallowing in His presence.  What a privilege to come to Him and allow ourselves to soak in his love forever.

‘Give thanks to the Lord, because He is good, His love is eternal’. Psalm 17:1

Lord, what is eternal?
Your love is ‘eternal’, yet the word seems too spiritual to make sense in our time-locked world.

Eternal is forever and forever includes now.
Eternal has gone before, yet is now and in the future.

Open my eyes, Lord, to your timelessness
The stretching of your love ahead of me,
Stretching to cover my past sins, my future sins and my present sinful life.
Stretching even to the life after my breath has failed,
Stretching back before I was humanly imagined – before my conception, my mother’s conception, my great-great-grandmother’s conception, the creation of the first mother.

Help me to recognise that your love is always there, is everlasting, forever, all enduring,
all-embracing, eternal.                                                                        
                                                                                                            © Angela Hobday 2010                   

Annie Try is the pen-name of Angela Hobday used when writing fiction.  Her most recent novel, Trying to Fly, was published by Instant Apostle in February 2017 and will be followed by another Dr Mike Lewis story, Out of Silence, in September 2017.

Trying to Fly follows the story of Jenny Drake as she stumbles across a mystery when revisiting the site of a childhood trauma.
Can she and her new friend, Jim, discover the truth?