Prayer and Limits

In recent days, I have felt my limitations more than ever before. Perhaps this is part of this stage of "middle age." In my younger days, I never really sensed limitations in terms of physical energy, time available to me, ministries I can be involved in, relationships I can invest in, places I can visit, books I can read, etc. But I'm really feeling this in recent weeks.

One reality of living in Paris is that different people come through for sightseeing, work, ministry, etc. As I have now been in Paris for 12+ years now, I'm noticing that I'm being contacted by different people passing through for ministry reasons who want to meet up. During the last 2 weeks, I've missed following through with a couple ministry colleagues who contacted me about getting together during their brief passing through Paris, but finally whom I didn't get together. While there was a spark of interest in seeing them, it wasn't enough to get me to follow through.

Today at our Belleville Church was a special Sunday where a good part of the day was programmed for building community. We stayed for 2 hours of this time and enjoyed being with everyone. There are many people at this church whom we genuinely like and are interested in. It was good getting to spend some time with some of them at Margarita and David's wedding and Werner and Charlotte's farewell party these past 2 Saturdays. But my wife and I just don't have the time that we would like to get together with people from church.

In our neighborhood, we also are buulding some relationships. Today while taking our son to the park, I got to talk with a couple of mothers about the next level of school beyond the 3 year French kindergarten. We are all interested in a local Catholic school because it seems like our kids would get a better all-around education here than in public schools in our neighborhood. In eavesdropping in part of their conversation, I note that they have not yet committed to following Jesus.

I believe that God has us here in this neighborhood at this point in time in order to be used by God through His Spirit to help people like them move toward becoming fully devoted followers of Jesus. However, as I heard them talk, I got discouraged that this would never happen. As with people at church, I don't think that we can personally know well all the children and their parents at our children's school or at the pool with the kids on Mondays and Tuesdays. But we can get to know some of them. I was reminded again that it is largely through prayer for them and through living authentically caring lives that God will somehow tough their lives and break through their doubt and cynicism about how they currently envision Christianity.

Speaking of limited energy, my eyes keep closing, so I should close and get to bed. If it were up to me, I wouldn't have created sleep, as I don't enjoy sleeping that much. Moreover, by delaying sleep to a certain level, I'm able to catch up some on some projects, taks, But something about sleeping seems to be restorative and God works in our sleep as He does when we are awake. In His wisdom, He saw the need for humans to sleep.