L I FE L ESSON S
Keep Looking Up! Carolyn Litfin My husband’s grandfather was a godly man, an example to us. He had a saying: “Keep looking up!” I’ve often found this advice to be tremendously helpful, with God repeatedly helping me when I look up to Him in the Word and prayer. There are so many valuable postures for prayer—kneeling, being in a prayer clos et, praying with “two or more,” prayer walks, etc. One that helps me when I feel anxious and am alone is to walk around my house and pray out loud, to speak words of praise, confession, petition, thanksgiving and remembrance. As I started to pray the other day about a situation that was creating anxiety for me, I noticed my glasses, which I don’t usually wear in the house as I’m nearsighted. But I grabbed them anyway, thinking, “You need to see to pray.” As I walked into my living room praying, at the confession point of prayer, I was thinking of God’s gift of reaching out to save and forgive us, through His great love and mercy, through nothing of our own merit. I looked up and saw a bright cross in the sky on top of a distant steeple. I’ve lived in my house 13 years and never seen this. Admittedly, I’m
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usually looking East for the sunrise and don’t often even look out that window. But because my glasses were on and the particular lighting of the day, I could see it clearly. Given where I was in the prayer and in my thoughts, looking up and seeing that cross was quite moving. instead of around us on things like our cir cumstances, v a rious distractions, social media, and the news. Those things, while they can have some the same peace. What would we discover? Sev e ral years ago, I noticed while studying Genesis the re peated phrase, “lifted his eyes and looked” or “I lifted my eyes and saw.”
GOD’S PROVISION ” when three men stood at his tent door, one maybe being the LORD, to tell him that he and Sarah would have a child in their old age. • When Abraham had Isaac on the altar, after God stopped him from sacrificing Isaac, it says in Genesis 22: 1 3 - 1 4 ,
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