“Oh, how precious is time, and how it pains me to see it slide away, while I do so little to any good purpose.” ~ David Brainerd

Father –

The mind is a battle field, one in which I am meant to be actively involved in the fight. Despite the fact that I am to take every thought captive to Christ, I choose instead the easier path. Not so much anger, or lust, or bitterness, though there are plenty of these thoughts spinning around in my head; no, more often, I choose the path of lethargy. Of mental laziness.

Instead of doing all the things that might profit me – to think upon your greatness, to hide your word in my heart through my brain, to choose cognizance of Your presence, I opt for TV. Or twitter. Or other such amusements that continue to dull my spiritual senses.

When I look back over the course of the day, Father, I am appalled at how little time I actually spend thinking of you, and how correspondingly much time I spend thinking of something. And the saddest part is that I can’t articulate what that something might be. So time drifts in and out of life, and it is squandered by the lazy-minded like me.

Today, Lord, I ask you to not just prick my heart; prick my mind. I want to love you with every part of my being – my heart, my body, and yes, my intellect, too. I don’t want another day to go by in which I do not dwell on the unending depths of Your greatness. I want instead to be swallowed up in them rather than spend another day in the alluring “else.”

Thank You, Lord, that when you save, you are redeeming the whole of man. You have not only secured for me an eternal future, but a present in which I might probe the depths of Your great love. Help me, Father, not to be the man who sits before a vast banquet of grace and chooses only to fill my belly with crackers. For this inner life, and the battles thereof, are where I might even now enter into the eternal life in which Jesus described, that I might know You, and know the One You have sent.

May it be so. In Jesus’ name,

Amen.