Rainy day potification

I like to think of myself as pretty active. I run most, well some mornings. I bike to work. I like to run poles with the kids when I'm coaching baseball. I don't like sitting still for long.

Right now I am sitting still. I am staring out the window of my office during lunch watching a pretty significant downpour instead of taking my usual two mile lunch walk. I've been in a pretty bad mood since we got back from New York. The trip was too long; it was too quick. There was too much to do and not enough time to do it in. There was too much time in the car. There were too many miles (1600 round trip). But most importantly I think there was too much deviation from my routine.

I like to get up early. On days that I run I get up at 4:00. On off days I get up at 5:00. I like to put on a pot of coffee, take a warm shower, and get ready to face the day. Part of that preparation is a time of prayer, meditation, contemplation, and scripture reading.

Now I am no Bible scholar. While I read daily I don't retain nearly as much as I'd like to and I feel like I really understand even less. When I do feel like I'm starting to "get" something I run into some kind of interpretational/language barrier and discover a severe and immediate need to know Greek or Hebrew. I don't have the time or mental capacity to learn either. Simply put, the scriptures have presented a number of interpretational issues to a number of people with far greater minds than mine. So why do I continue this seeming charade of trying to understand what little I can?

I don't know that there's a cognitive answer to that question. I can, however, tell that I get a great deal of benefit from the practice. I can tell this especially on days like today; days that I'm staring out the window on my lunch break frustrated with the rain, my sandwich, the phone, and the fact that the office temperature is always either too cold or too hot. I haven't opened my Bible since Friday morning. I haven't had time. Really I haven't made time. And now I'm frustrated.

Daily prayer and devotion time is not a magic cure for everything in life that ails you. But if you spend time trying to intimately discover and connect with the Divine you will often find that life's little problems seem even smaller. Every once in a while I need to be reminded of this. Some times all it takes is a little rain.