Elizabeth Pemberton March 15th 2015 ~ Are you a spontaneous person?

Are you a spontaneous person? Imagine you have nothing particular planned for this afternoon. What if I came up to you and said “Let’s go do something fun together, right now!” Would you say “Let’s do it!” or would you be a bit more cautious and wonder what I had in mind, where we might go, how long we’d be out, whether you’d actually enjoy it and wonder if you really should be doing something else?Whether we love being spontaneous or not, I wonder if, in the very busy lives we lead these days, we have lost some of our capacity for it– simply because there is very little room for it to happen. I remember my sister-in-law telling about one day in the last school holidays when she and the kids were sitting around at home and heard some distant music from an ice-cream truck. So for once she said, “Let’s get an ice-cream” and they all jumped in the car and drove around the streets trying to find it! It was quite an adventure; they drove around, listening for the music, trying to track down the truck and eventually ended up 25 minutes away at the beach! The ice-cream truck had disappeared but they found an ice-cream shop then sat on the beach together laughing about their adventure and enjoying their ice-creams. What a lovely thing. There should be more ice-cream-truck chasing!This week I’ve been thinking a bit about being spontaneous in prayer. I came across this quote from a French nun called Therese of Lisieux who lived in the late 1800s. She said, “For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven; it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.”I love that! And I wonder if in our busyness and distractedness we have lost some of our capacity for spontaneous prayer, too. As we work in our gardens, do we turn our thoughts towards heaven and praise God for the trees? As we wave goodbye to our friends after a nice catch-up, do we turn our gaze to heaven and thank God for the friends in our lives? If we meet someone who is sick, is our natural instinct to turn our hearts towards heaven and bring that person to God? And do we ever do this out loud, especially when children are present? It’s a wonderful thing to model heartfelt, spontaneous prayer to kids – the more they see it and hear it, the more they will do it themselves in the everyday. If you are talking about Grandma, why not say a quick prayer for Grandma? If you drive past a car accident, why not say a simple prayer out loud for those people? The more kids experience it, the better they will learn to lift their own eyes and hearts to God in prayer in day to day life. And we could learn a thing or two as well and grow in our own relationship with God. Just do it!Lord, thanks for all the people reading this musing – may they know deep joy in you today. Amen.Blessings,Liz Pemberton