the Week of Proper 17 / Ordinary 22
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Daily Devotionals
Voice of the Lord
Just as a deer longs for running streams, God, I long for you (Psalm 42:1 [2]).
When my husband was in seminary, he received a rather odd homework assignment: he was to spend twenty minutes a day with his wife, just talking. Every single day. No exceptions.
I can't tell you how good that was for our marriage. After the course was over, we continued to do that exercise daily because we enjoyed the closeness we had developed. However, as the demands of life and the pressures of work increased, little by little, we skipped a day here, a day there; pretty soon, we stopped having our talks.
As his job demanded that he travel more and more, our time together eroded even further. Our relationship became strained. Yes, we still loved each other. Yes, we were still committed to each other. But an entire dimension of our relationshipthe emotional closenesswent by the wayside. It was our loss. It took some time, but we learned our lesson and are now protecting that special time together at all costs.
Our relationship with God is no different. We can be committed to him, we can love him, but if we don't take that twenty minutes a day talking with him, relating to him, and just being together, a whole beautiful facet of our relationship will atrophy. The loss will be ours
...set side twenty minutes to spend with the Lord, just talking with him, listening, and enjoying our closeness.
ZG
The Voice of the Lord, Copyright © 1998 by the Lewis and Harriet Lederer Foundation, Inc. Published by Messianic Jewish Publishers, Distributed by Messianic Jewish Resources, www.messianicjewish.net. All rights reserved. Used by permission. No part of this article may be reproduced in print or on the web, or transmitted in any form, without the written permission of the publisher.