Day One: Thirteen Years of Tuesdays
Day One: Thirteen Years of Tuesdays
SCRIPTURE READING: Genesis 16:16–17:1; Psalm 13:1–2 (NIV)
"Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael. When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless.’" ... "How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?"
DEVOTIONAL REFLECTION
Sunday we looked at the white space between two verses. Abram is eighty-six at the end of one chapter and ninety-nine at the start of the next. Thirteen years disappear into a page break.
It takes you a second to read. It took him nearly five thousand days to live.
And here is what I keep coming back to: those years were almost certainly ordinary. There is no famine recorded, no war, no crisis. Just a man raising a son, managing a household, moving livestock, going to bed, waking up, doing it again. If you had asked Abram in year seven how his walk with God was, he might have said fine. Nothing was wrong. Nothing was moving either.
That is the kind of middle most of us are actually in. Not a valley, but a plateau. And a plateau does something a crisis does not. A crisis drives you to your knees. A plateau just slowly reduces what you expect.
Watch how the reduction works. At first you pray with confidence. Then you pray with questions. Then you pray because you know you should. Then you stop bringing it up, because saying it out loud one more time feels worse than letting it go quiet. Nobody announces they have stopped believing. You just quietly renegotiate downward and call it maturity.
Now read Psalm 13 again, because David does something we usually do not. He asks "how long" four times in two verses. Four times. That is not politeness, and it is not a sanitized prayer you would read at a church luncheon. That is a man complaining to God’s face.
And God put it in the Bible.
Which tells you something important: the danger in a long middle is not that you get angry with God. The danger is that you go quiet. David is still in the conversation. He is frustrated, confused, and unmistakably still talking. Most of us in year thirteen are not shaking our fists. We are just no longer mentioning it.
So before you ask God to change anything this week, start here. Not with resolve. With honesty. What did you used to pray about specifically that has quietly dropped off the list?
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
– What did I once pray for by name that I have stopped bringing up to God?
– If I mapped the last five years of my life, where is the white space — the stretch where nothing seemed to move?
– Have I been honest with God about the waiting, or have I just gone silent about it and called that peace?
– What have I "adjusted to" that I once genuinely believed God would change?
– Am I more like David in Psalm 13, still asking — or like someone who quit asking to avoid being disappointed again?
PRAYER
Father, I did not stop believing in you. I just stopped expecting anything in particular. Somewhere in the long middle I quietly lowered what I ask for, and I called it being realistic. Today I want to be honest instead. You are not fragile and you are not far. Give me the courage to bring the thing back up, the one I stopped mentioning — and to keep talking to you about it even if nothing changes this week. Amen.
TODAY'S PRACTICE
Write down one thing you used to pray about specifically and no longer do. Beside it, write roughly when you stopped. Then pray about it once today, out loud, with the same specificity you used the first time. You are not manufacturing faith. You are reopening a conversation.
SCRIPTURE READING: Genesis 16:16–17:1; Psalm 13:1–2 (NIV)
"Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael. When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless.’" ... "How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?"
DEVOTIONAL REFLECTION
Sunday we looked at the white space between two verses. Abram is eighty-six at the end of one chapter and ninety-nine at the start of the next. Thirteen years disappear into a page break.
It takes you a second to read. It took him nearly five thousand days to live.
And here is what I keep coming back to: those years were almost certainly ordinary. There is no famine recorded, no war, no crisis. Just a man raising a son, managing a household, moving livestock, going to bed, waking up, doing it again. If you had asked Abram in year seven how his walk with God was, he might have said fine. Nothing was wrong. Nothing was moving either.
That is the kind of middle most of us are actually in. Not a valley, but a plateau. And a plateau does something a crisis does not. A crisis drives you to your knees. A plateau just slowly reduces what you expect.
Watch how the reduction works. At first you pray with confidence. Then you pray with questions. Then you pray because you know you should. Then you stop bringing it up, because saying it out loud one more time feels worse than letting it go quiet. Nobody announces they have stopped believing. You just quietly renegotiate downward and call it maturity.
Now read Psalm 13 again, because David does something we usually do not. He asks "how long" four times in two verses. Four times. That is not politeness, and it is not a sanitized prayer you would read at a church luncheon. That is a man complaining to God’s face.
And God put it in the Bible.
Which tells you something important: the danger in a long middle is not that you get angry with God. The danger is that you go quiet. David is still in the conversation. He is frustrated, confused, and unmistakably still talking. Most of us in year thirteen are not shaking our fists. We are just no longer mentioning it.
So before you ask God to change anything this week, start here. Not with resolve. With honesty. What did you used to pray about specifically that has quietly dropped off the list?
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
– What did I once pray for by name that I have stopped bringing up to God?
– If I mapped the last five years of my life, where is the white space — the stretch where nothing seemed to move?
– Have I been honest with God about the waiting, or have I just gone silent about it and called that peace?
– What have I "adjusted to" that I once genuinely believed God would change?
– Am I more like David in Psalm 13, still asking — or like someone who quit asking to avoid being disappointed again?
PRAYER
Father, I did not stop believing in you. I just stopped expecting anything in particular. Somewhere in the long middle I quietly lowered what I ask for, and I called it being realistic. Today I want to be honest instead. You are not fragile and you are not far. Give me the courage to bring the thing back up, the one I stopped mentioning — and to keep talking to you about it even if nothing changes this week. Amen.
TODAY'S PRACTICE
Write down one thing you used to pray about specifically and no longer do. Beside it, write roughly when you stopped. Then pray about it once today, out loud, with the same specificity you used the first time. You are not manufacturing faith. You are reopening a conversation.
Posted in Daily Devotional