Prayer Tip--A Beautiful Life is Formed When We Remember
Daily Scripture
Psalm 125:1-2, Matthew 6:25-26 (NRSV)
Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people, from this time on and forevermore.
Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
Daily Reflection & Prayer
The drive from Kansas City to Central Illinois is not what anyone would call spectacular. Missouri rolls into Illinois without much fanfare–hills, outcrops, farmland, and corn just beginning to push up through the ground. Nothing announces itself.
But I love it. I find something in it I can only describe as exhaling.
On a recent drive home for a wedding, I had the sunroof open and nothing playing, and somewhere between the state line and the county roads I grew up on, I found myself thinking about summers when I was a kid. Pool time. Bike rides. Baseball games. Camp meeting. Capture the Flag until somebody’s mom called everyone home. Summer had a feeling then, a lightness, a freedom, that I didn’t know I’d been quietly grieving until I was halfway through Missouri.
I think that’s what exhaustion does. It sneaks up on you. The daily accumulation of news and work, responsibilities, and screen time doesn’t arrive all at once. It just adds up, layer by layer, until you’re on a drive through farm country and suddenly aware of how heavy you’ve been carrying things you didn’t even notice you picked up.
I think God knew I needed that drive.
There’s something in Psalm 23 that has always felt less like poetry to me and more like a diagnosis. He makes me lie down. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. I used to read that as a gentle pastoral image. Now I read it as something more honest, that sometimes restoration isn’t something we choose so much as something God engineers, in the gaps we don’t plan for. A long, quiet drive. A sunroof. Corn coming up in the fields.
I didn’t arrive home having solved anything. I arrived home a little softer, a little more clear-eyed about what I actually want this summer to be. More walks. More books. More sun and less scrolling. More time with the people I love. More time with God, not as another item on a list, but as the thing that makes the rest of it make sense.
The psalmist knew something I keep having to relearn. That sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is let yourself be led somewhere quiet and stay there long enough for your soul to catch up with the rest of you.
Prayer
Thank you for the moments you engineer in the gaps, the ones I didn’t plan for that turned out to be exactly what I needed. I didn’t know how tired I was until I got quiet enough to feel it. I didn’t know how much I’d been missing until I had a few hours with nothing to do but think.
Restore me this summer. Lead me beside still waters when I get too far into the noise. Remind me what matters and help me to actually live that way, not just think about it somewhere on a long drive home.
I want more of you this summer. More presence, more peace, more of the lightness that I think you’ve been trying to offer me all along.
Amen.
GPS Insights
Mindy LaHood
Mindy LaHood, who serves as Worship Communications and Design Manager, wrote this week's Prayer Tip. Mindy blends her passion for writing with crafting clear and engaging content across various platforms. Her calling as a writer shapes her approach to creating meaningful connections through visual design and thoughtful communication strategies.
