Strike the Ground...

I've been thinking a lot about the things we ask for, whether we ask in prayer or by holding a hope or a dream in our hearts, or even the casual things we speak in "wishful" thinking. I have always been a dreamer, visions of palatial homes, adoring children, devoted spouse, friends gathered around my table filling my fantasies since I was in my teens. We all have our secret hopes & dreams, and the saddest realization of my adult life came when I was asked what I wanted and I could not answer. The pain & loss, the heartbreak I had suffered, that we all suffer, in living in a broken world had stripped my dreams from me. I was surviving, but I had forgotten how to dream, Worse than that I had begun to believe I didn't deserve the dreams I recalled in fragments. Somehow I had started to think everyone else merited happy homes with devoted spouses, family and friends, fulfilling careers, all of the good things our hearts were designed to long for.

I cannot begin to tell you how often I have stamped my feet and shook my fist heavenward in frustration; crying out for it to be "my turn". I never expected life to be fair, but neither did I
expect to so often feel passed by. It is a strange dichotomy, believing God is a Father who longs to pour out the blessings of heaven on me, and still believing I've been overlooked & forgotten.
As I write this I find brought to mind the image caught in my mind's eye last spring. I don't recall just what I had asked to be shown, but I saw a huge chest, the kind we often associate with pirates. I reached tentatively into that chest and chose a few items to adorn myself...and suddenly the contents of the box were being poured out over my head, piling up at my feet, more than I could ever have imagined or hoped for.

I wonder sometimes if we, even once believe God wants to give us the desires of our hearts, think we should (there's a word we could lose, "should"-but that's another post) only pray for BIG things-health & healing, world peace, the big ticket stuff, not our everyday needs & longings, as though God only cares about the so called important things. If He knows when a sparrow falls, knows the number of hairs on our heads, why would he not care that we ache for a companion, for jobs we find satisfying, for things beyond our daily bread. Why are we satisfied with enough, or good enough, when the abundance of heaven is ours?

Yesterday I was reading a passage in 2 Kings 13:15-19:
¹⁵ And Elisha said to him, “Take a bow and some arrows.” So he took himself a bow and some arrows. ¹⁶ Then he said to the king of Israel, “Put your hand on the bow.” So he put his hand on it, and Elisha put his hands on the king’s hands. ¹⁷ And he said, “Open the east window”; and he opened it. Then Elisha said, “Shoot”; and he shot. And he said, “The arrow of the LORD’s deliverance and the arrow of deliverance from Syria; for you must strike the Syrians at Aphek till you have destroyed them.” ¹⁸ Then he said, “Take the arrows”; so he took them. And he said to the king of Israel, “Strike the ground”; so he struck three times, and stopped. ¹⁹ And the man of God was angry with him, and said, “You should have struck five or six times; then you would have struck Syria till you had destroyed it! But now you will strike Syria only three times.”

As I read it a again it occurred to me that we do what the king was doing, asking, in ignorance for "enough", when we could have asked for so much more. I pray differently now. Many of the deep desires of my heart are still so deeply buried they may as well be forgotten, but I have asked of my Father, who knows all that I be given these things too-and sometimes I find myself with some wonderful gift in my grasp, and I realize that I had no idea it was just what I had always wanted until it was mine.

Are you bold enough to "strike the ground" beyond what seems reasonable? I am.