Hi there readers!

Today is something of a momentous day for The Jonah Tree as it not only marks the end of a year of prayer journaling for Francesca, it also marks the end of this blog series.  I trust that this blog has brought you moments of  joy over the past year and that some of the things that Francesca learned also rang true for you.  I’m a big believer that life is a journey and that there is much we can learn on the way – from God and his word, from our families, from each other – and sometimes even from the lives of fictional characters such as those depicted in The Jonah Tree.

This story hasn’t really given the opportunity for feedback since it was purely fictional and not in the format of a usual blog format.  If you would like to make comment the best place to do so is either on Facebook under the group “Mothering Heights” or via email at keitha@motheringheights.org.

I would love to hear from you!

If you are just tuning in and feel like you have missed out, fear not.  The Jonah Tree is a story that can be read in its entirety by clicking on “Archives” on the right hand side of this sight, selecting June 2009, and tracing back to the first entry on June 1st 2009.

Finally, I would like to extend my best wishes to you and put out my own challenge where prayer journaling is concerned.  I started my own prayer journal several years ago and found it really revolutionised my relationship with God.  If you haven’t given it a try, why not set out and see where it takes you?

Warmest regards,

Keitha Smith

Keitha Smith is co-author of “Mothering Heights: A Novel Approach for Christian Mothers”

For more information see www.motheringheights.org

Morning Lord!  Well, here I am, at the café, with celebratory coffee to mark the fact that I have been writing in my prayer journal (and therefore spending dedicated time with you!) for one whole year.  It was great to also celebrate with Andrew by going out for dinner last night and reflecting on the great many things I have learned on my journey with you over the past twelve months.  Of course I didn’t quite manage getting to my prayer journal every day but have benefited greatly from the fact that I brought so much of my life before you, Lord.  I will always be grateful to Daniel for his challenge to us to start in the first place.  The experience really has changed my life.

Speaking of Daniel, he brought us yet another challenging message yesterday, this time based on a few very obscure verses in 2 Samuel 24.  Towards the end of this chapter (as you know!) David is looking to buy the land that the temple was eventually built on.  The owner of the land, awed by the presence of the king, offered the land to David for free.  But David said,

“No, I insist on paying you for it.  I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”

Daniel linked this with some verses that talk about servanthood including Luke 12: 35 & 36 which say:

“Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately ope the door for him.”

Daniel said that we are called to be servants of you and that this servanthood may (or even should) come at a cost.  He challenged us with the words of David – that we don’t just give to you what comes naturally to us, but that we be prepared to give in service to you even if it costs us to do so.  It made me think of all the visitors we have had to stay over the past twelve months, most of whom have come at a cost (either physically, emotionally or financially) and how, with the wrong attitude, you can end up resentful and worn out by begrudging the service.  How much better might it have gone for me if I had instead been more willing and said to you,  “I will not sacrifice that which costs me nothing”?

So, Lord, as I look forward to the next twelve months with you I feel certain of three things.  The first is your amazing love that leads us always closer to you; the second that by being dependent on you and obedient to you that we get everything necessary to walk that walk; and the third is that from now on I will have in my heart a willingness to serve you, even if it costs me everything I have.  It feels risky saying that to you, because I don’t want to end up like Job or Ezekiel, but I know I need to make a daily choice to trust in you.

Thank you, Lord from the bottom of my heart for all you have done for me.  I commit myself to you and trust that you will continue to work in my life, through the good times and the bad, according to your good purposes.  Thank you for the amazing gift of motherhood and for my wonderful family.  Thank you for friends, for fellowship and for all that you do for me both seen and unseen.  In the end all I can do is pray… Amen, Lord, Amen.

Morning Lord!  Just a quick entry today sorry!  It’s a bit colder this morning (although spectacularly fine) and we all seem to have slowed down with the cold.  We need to be ready to go to church in fifteen minutes and as always I do want to make time to spend time with you before we go, however briefly.  I pray you would forgive me my sins and cleanse me from all unrighteousness for your namesake, and that you would bless our family’s time at church this morning.  Speak to us from your word, and be with Daniel as he brings your message to us.

I was talking with Andrew yesterday about some of the realisations I have been having about the effects of my year of prayer journaling.  He’s so proud of me for sticking with it, and excited about the place we are both at in our faith journey, that he’s suggested we go out for dinner tonight to celebrate.  Andrew said (quite rightly) that we don’t do enough to recognise and mark things in our life outside of birthdays and special occasions, especially in relation to our faith.  So, Cameron and Ashley have been drafted in to babysit and we’re off to our favourite local little restaurant.  I pray you would bless that time together as we spend time together – and in a strange way, with you as well.  I guess this is the equivalent of us asking you out to dinner, Lord.  Wanna come?

Anyway, must fly.  I love you, Lord, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for you and for my salvation.  I pray that same salvation for my children.  I lift all before you in your precious name…Amen

Morning Lord!  I’ve had a very leisurely morning so far – so much so that I’m in danger of not making time for you at all.  I guess that’s another one of life’s little ironies – most of us crave freedom but we actually benefit from structure.

We haven’t got very much exciting planned today.  The weather is very changeable and not conducive to outside (free!) entertainment such as parks and beaches.  I guess that’s hardly surprising given that next Tuesday is the first official day of winter.  I guess we’ll just have to see what develops.

I got to thinking yesterday about how much I have to be grateful for, Lord.  Granted, we are not rich, our home is modest, and we’re never going to set the world on fire with some latent talent we might have.  Yet we have so much more than most – including dare I say, a sense of humour and ability to laugh things off.  We have family, friends, fellowship – and most of all we have you.  I got to thinking how easy it is to become dissatisfied with our lot by considering what we don’t have.  But the thing is, when we have you, we have everything.

I think the big difference in our appreciation of you comes from having an engaged, living relationship with you, Lord.  I was thinking to myself that in the past I have not really appreciated you because I hadn’t really relied on you for anything other than my basic salvation.  I just figured that you got saved, then tried your best to be as “Christian” as possible, and essentially tried not to stuff up.  How different it is to have you as the centre of that salvation, where it is you living in and through me, rather than me living for you.

So, Lord, whatever we do today then becomes completely secondary to the fact that we do it with you.  And on that note I pray once again that you would work in and through me for your good purposes.  I lift our family before you and pray for your blessing.  Amen.

Morning Lord!  I was feeling a bit nostalgic this morning for my days of writing my prayer journal and having coffee so I’ve come to the café today for a brief time before tackling the tribulations of supermarket shopping.  I must say, it’s nice to be here.

My mind this morning is still dwelling on the things we talked about at Bible Study yesterday, Lord.  Libby had prepared a fabulous study about your will.  We had already talked a few weeks ago about Romans 12: 1 & 2, about how if we lead a life of dependence and obedience with a renewed mind (a.k.a good thought processes) that then we would know what your will is.  Libby said she felt as though she should expand on this a bit and cover some of the things she had been learning about your will.

Libby said (and I agree) that a lot of discussions on knowing and understanding your will have an almost mystical component to them.  There are a multitude of theories about what one must do to discover your will – many of which leave a person feeling inadequate as a Christian.  Then there’s the whole realm of prophecy where some people are ‘in the know’ while others get no revelation beyond the fact that they aren’t one of these ‘in the know’ people.  Libby said that in her experience many of these prophecies seem to be little more than a spiritualised sort of fortune-telling rather than the sort of Biblical prophecy your read about.  Biblical prophecies almost always called people to give up their sinful ways and draw closer to you and never mentioned future events except to say that failure to repent would lead to disaster.

Libby’s suggestion was that your will is in fact a lot simpler than all of these things.  She based what she said on the text in Matthew 22: 34 – 40:

“Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.  One of them, and expert in the law, tested him with this question:  ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment?’

“Jesus replied, ‘ “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it; “Love your neighbour as yourself.”  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these to commandments.’”

As Libby pointed out, we often ask you,  “What is your will, Lord?  Please show me!”  We can even pray this sitting in church and be completely oblivious to the pain and suffering of a person sitting right beside us.  And yet if we were to just concentrate on these two things, what might be accomplished!  I thought about myself over this past year and the times I have prayed for you to show me your will when in fact, with all the people that have come and gone through our doors, I was actually doing your will right then and there.  I was, in a miserable sort of way, loving my neighbour.  If only I had had the right attitude – that very ‘being transformed by the renewing of my mind’ – I might have been able to see that for myself.

The other thing that Libby said which I thought was very profound is that searching for “God’s will” actually takes your mind off the here and now.  And while many of us do spend our lives thinking about the future – what we might say, what we might do, where we might go – the truth is that we can only live right now, this very second.  And your will should apply as much to right now as it does to the future.

The more I think about it the more I realise that over the past twelve months I have really revolutionised the way that I think about my relationship with you, and in consequence have revolutionised my relationship with you itself.  And I would not be surprised if this transformation began with my commitment to start this prayer journal.  My prayers (however long, waffly or misguided) have given you permission to act in my life – and act you have!  This is all the more true since I have become more dependent and obedient too.

Anyway, I had better get going now since the dregs of my coffee are stone cold and the supermarket queues are probably getting longer by the second.  I give you thanks and praise for your presence in my life, Lord.  I pray you would continue to work in and through me for your good purposes.  I pray all in your precious name…Amen

Morning Lord!  Bible Study day today!  Just wanted to check in with you to give you thanks and praise for this new day and for the opportunity to be able to go and spend time with other mothers and look at your word.  As always, I pray that you would make all between us right in your sight.  I know the key to living a righteous life is to be both dependent on you and obedient to you.  If only it wasn’t so easy to simply rely on our own strength, Lord.

I pray you would speak to me today and help me learn more of you.  I pray for Libby as she prepares today’s study.  Of course thinking about Libby then reminds me about dress shopping with Jasmine on Saturday since Libby also came along.  As you know, she isn’t part of the bridal party but is now considered by Jasmine to be an indispensible voice of reason in any given situation.  I must say that her presence made me feel so much more relaxed.  Thankfully the style of bridesmaids’ dresses that we’ve settled on is very classy and flattering to the figure.  The other two bridesmaids were nice and I suspect that being involved may actually turn out to be fun.

Lunch with Linley yesterday wasn’t quite so enjoyable.  As predicted she did lay it on pretty thick about her glamorous lifestyle.  I tried to let it all wash over me and instead ask some deeper questions about her life but Linley had her “Everything’s Marvellous” façade on so tight I fear I heard little real truth.  However, I did learn more about her than she did about me.  I could write several pages on her life after lunch yesterday.  She’s struggle to fill up the back of a postage stamp based on the interest she took in what’s happening for me.  C’est la vie.  I’ll just keep being faithful to what I feel you would have me do where this friendship is concerned.

Anyway, duty calls.  Bless my family as they go about their day, Lord.  Work in and through me for your good purposes.  I lift all before you in your mighty name…Amen

Just a quick entry this morning, Lord, to check in with you before I get stuck into a few things.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me this week but I haven’t got a lot done and it’s all piling up.  The wet weather doesn’t help.  The whole house seems full of damp and half-dried washing which is driving me a bit crazy.  It seems horribly petty to say so, but one of my favourite things is sticking the washing out and then coming back a few hours later to find it all perfectly dry.  It’s heaven.  Juggling washing is not.

The other reason for the brevity of my entry today is that I am off into the city later this morning to meet up with Linley for lunch.  As you know, Dad called yesterday to see if there was any possibility he might be able to pick up Nathan after kindy today so that they can carry on their adventure.  What this quite entails I can only guess at.  Dad said,  “Man stuff.”  Mum said they spend their time in the garage bashing wood and talking nonsense.  It all seems good to me.  So, I thought I should stick to my resolve of keeping in touch in Linley and have arranged lunch.

No doubt she will spend most of the time telling me how busy she is at work and how she doesn’t usually have time for lunch, how her life is fabulous and so much more interesting than my own poor specimen of a life, but I shall try not to be bothered by this.  I’m just struck with this feeling (knowing full well she has built her house on the sand) that one day we will once again need to be there for her – and that next time she may be more prepared to see the need for you, Lord.  To this end I really do feel called in a sense to keep up the friendship – and maybe the occasional lunch is as good a way as any of doing this.  It’s a defined length of time in a semi-neutral environment (apart from the way that the city makes me feel horribly parochial) and only needs to be now and again.

So, Lord, as has become my habit, I pray that you would work in and through me today for your good purposes, and that you would bless our time together and our conversation.  Help me to keep in mind the higher purpose of our friendship should Linley get too condescending!  I commit myself to you in your precious name…Amen

Morning Lord!  As someone jokingly pointed out to me at kindy this morning, it’s seven months until Christmas Day today!  The scariest thing about this is just how fast the year is flying by.  As ruler of the universe you are probably the best person to ask this question of:  Is time actually speeding up?  If the answer is “Yes” it wouldn’t surprise me.

Unfortunately seven months is a bit too long of a time frame to use as a viable threat for naughty children – something that after this morning’s performance I am feeling in need of.  Now that Faith, Trinity and Christian are no longer in residence (and in some small way a common enemy) I am starting to see some degradation in Nathan and Emily’s behaviour.  Now that they don’t have a need to be so closely aligned with one another in order to gain or keep territory they are once again back to vying for supremacy with each other.  The bickering over who sits where in the car, whose turn it is to choose what to watch on television, even “I had it first” comments are coming thick and fast, culminating in an all-out shouting match this morning.

So, instead of threatening no Christmas presents (a stupid threat anyway because I love the excitement of seeing the kids open their gifts on Christmas Day) I have banned television for two days after school and am promising confiscation of toys if no improvement is seen.  Is there any way to retain the sibling serenity of the last few months, I wonder?  Asking another family to move in with us might work – but that does seem a bit drastic.  So, any ideas you might have would be greatly appreciated, Lord.

Bless our family, Lord, according to you will.  I continue to pray for the salvation of my children and for your hand to be on them as we raise them towards independence and adulthood.  Work in and through me today for your good purposes I pray…Amen

Morning Lord!  Well, back to the usual Monday morning routine – which all seems so much easier to manage now that I am down to only one school drop off and one kindy drop off since Faith and Trinity are otherwise organised.  It’s amazing what you can actually do when push comes to shove.  If there’s anything to be said for motherhood (well, beyond the fact that it is one of the most important things I’ll ever do) is that it sure expands your coping capacity.

Speaking of coping capacities, mine was pushed to the limit somewhat by yesterday’s lunch.  Claire and William came straight back home with us after church and sat around looking po-faced and sanctimonious while I tried my best to whip up the world’s best situation-saving lunch.  Actually, I remembered I had some home made soup in the freezer, dispatched Andrew for fresh bread, and made some cinnamon scrolls in his absence – all the while trying to make polite conversation with Ma and Pa Copeland and simultaneously avoiding the subject of the elephant in the room – how things would be when Cameron and Ashley turned up.

Mercifully Andrew had returned from buying bread by the time they did show up so he was able to fill in the gaps in conversation while I got the last of the lunch preparations ready.  Ashley was super helpful in the kitchen (to cover up her nerves I guess) and the children (bless their little cotton socks) were so happy to have Cameron and Ashley around that they did more than their fair share of papering over the cracks.  In fact I would go as far to say that the two of them were an unexpected source of blessing because of the enthusiasm with which they greeted Cameron in particular.  His willingness to engage with them showed (I hope) a whole different side of him to Claire and William and did at least break the rather thick ice.

All in all, it wasn’t what you’d call the warmest of occasions but at the very least it was civilised and has laid a platform for further interaction.  Claire even went so far as to ask just when Cameron and Ashley intend to wed and seemed suitably satisfied with the answer of next summer – probably January.  Whether that’s because it gives her time to put the kybosh on the whole thing or to get used to the idea I don’t know.  It seems a miracle she even acknowledged that there would be a wedding at some point.

All of this distracted somewhat from Daniel’s message on Colossians 4 which was, as usual, very good.  Most of the chapter is taken up with final greetings but the first few verses really pack a punch.  I’m copying them down to remind me:

“Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.  And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.  Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.  Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity.  Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”

I pray you would make this a reality in my life Lord.  In a growing sense I want only to serve you.  Work in and through me today for your namesake…Amen

Morning Lord!  Bit of a rush this morning, sorry, on account of the fact that on the one morning I do need to be up and doing early (getting ready for church, making as many lunch preparations for today’s Summit as possible, spending time with you) I have of course slept in big time.  We all did.  And so the ironies of life continue.

As a result we are all groggy, grumpy and, in my case, as nervous as a bag of cats about the upcoming lunch and its ramifications for the future.  And, although I am well aware that the quality of my food will not ultimately make a difference in said future, I feel as though that might be true in some strange way.  Therefore, the fact that I have made no preparations whatsoever is the cause for much angst.

How am I to put away these concerns to focus on you?  In all honesty I’m tempted not to go to church at all in favour of staying home and getting things under way, but then that would make me more Martha-ish than Mary-ish and I’m not sure that’s what I want either.  Can you tell I’m nervous?

So, Lord, I just want to hand the whole thing over to you and pray for you to work in and through me (and Andrew) for your good purposes.  I commit the lunch to you on all levels – the food, the conversation, the outcome – and pray that you would be the one in charge and not any of us – and most especially not Claire or William.  I pray for Cameron and Ashley, that you would give them your peace that passes all understanding, because if I’m nervous, I hate to think what they’re like right now.

Forgive me my sin and cleanse me from all unrighteousness.  I know that all I need to be is dependent on you and obedient to you and all will be as it should be.  I lift all before you in your mighty name…Amen