Nielsen’s Nook

A few days ago, I was prayerfully reflecting on Psalm 70 and wrote out a prayer that was intended as a private post, in which I lamented over the holes in the bucket of my life (i.e., my rickety old bucket). So you can imagine my alarm when my statistics meter listed that post as visited by someone in Plano, Texas.

In the prayer, I did not say anything I would regret, thankfully; however, this morning as I have reflected on this (and my blood pressure has come back down), I found it an interesting thing to contemplate. In the prayer there was a paragraph in which I laid out an insecurity that I wrestle with in a present situation. I think that paragraph made me most squeamish, but why?

On the one hand, the idea of other people of unknown disposition to me knowing something that stirs insecurity in me makes me nervous. And yet it’s out there now and in a way it is quite liberating. Someone else has seen a bit of the bucket that no one else apart from the Lord was thought to have seen. Perhaps, it is much like how the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz must have felt when the curtain is thrown back and Dorothy and company all see the very little man in his hiding place.

The world does not need to read all my prayers, and I am certain that there are those who would not be gracious to me if given the chance and an advantage. So I have privatized the post in question as I had originally intended. But I leave you with this question that I have been entertaining: Would we pray in such a way that we might not like the world to know? If so, I believe that in our vulnerability with God and his power in our lives to bring repentance and correction we have hope for growth and change. On the other hand, if we do not pray or do not pray over those areas that are rickety or unseemly, then how do we expect to grow and change?