What is it you love the most about retirement? Solitude would be my answer. What is it you miss the most about work? Conversation would be my answer. Yet I find in retirement that I engage in more meaningful conversation with the people I encounter. Perhaps it is because it isn't the mundane conversation of work: What do you have scheduled? Do I have any meetings? Tell me how things are going in your department? Can you give me that information so I can share it with the executive director? Let me know when that is about to happen, so I can get it on my calendar. Let's make sure to write a thank you note, letter, or show our gratitude somehow for this.
You get the idea.
Now, if I'm talking to you, it is because I want to and want to engage at some level and not just because it is a part of workplace etiquette.
So, I guess in retirement, your devotional life and prayer life took off too? (Silence, crickets chirping.) No, you are correct. There probably should be a correlation to available time and quality of devotional and prayer life, but there isn't sadly I have to admit. Yet I will say this to each of us: There is available time while going full throttle in vocation and with available free time. There are, as we used to say in our school district back in Houston, no excuses.
Prayer is that time we spend with God to dialog with him about our life. Our hopes, our aspirations, our fears, our gifts and our issues, and God's hopes, aspirations, desires and answers to our issues in our lives. God invites us to pray. Christ says in Luke 11, "When you pray, say:..." as he instructs us then in the Lord's Prayer (2 - 4). In Luke 11, he also invites us to pray at any time, "Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrive on a journey and I have nothing before him.... yet because of his impudence, he will rise and give him whatever he needs.'" (5 - 9)
God hears our prayer at any hour and knows our needs. He listens to us and gives us answers in his time based on what he believes is best, as Matthew notes in his account of the Lord's prayer, "Your will be done."
As a goal, set aside time to pray if you haven't done so. Take time to clear your thoughts and be in dialog with God. Find that place where you can stop and talk to him about what is on your mind: Your hopes, your concerns, your thankfulness, your needs, and even your wants.
A prayer of thankfulness that our God let's us come to him and talk to him. We also give thanks that he is there to give us answers and guidance in our daily lives (our daily bread).
Hope Men's Ministry
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