I leaned my head against the window as the plane began to ascend.  

How long will I have to fly alone? I thought to myself, as I pushed my head harder against the window and felt that familiar tinge of loneliness. Another long flight by myself. Another lonely night in a hotel room. Another weekend of ministering to women, yet still feeling the burden of doing it alone.  

Even when you’re ministering to a room full of women, it can still feel lonely, and even overwhelming.  

With the grind of everyday life constantly staring at us, always asking for just a bit more, how can we even think of pausing and going on retreat? What does the Bible say about retreats? Let’s look to Jesus.

Yesterday I unexpectedly found myself by a lone bench on an empty oceanfront. A boat was just off the shore, solitary but securely anchored in the sea. I ached with the unexpected beauty, the symbolic solitude of the boat. I felt like this boat. Alone, aching, but securely anchored. As I stood there, I thought about the last two months and how a crisis can set off a whole new cycle of grief and loss.

Maltbie Babcock, like many of us, would find that when he had had his fill of the problems and pettiness of ministry, he'd need a break. He'd walk past the church office and say to his assistant, "I'm going to be about my Father's world." His church was situated on a hill overlooking a valley, so he'd go outback to listen to the Lord.  

The recent rain and cold weather has left our SoCal mountains with a beautiful blanket of snow. Looking at them has reminded me of the times I have spent with the Lord—on the mountaintop. We’ve all had them at one time or another: precious moments when we encounter God in a deeper, more intimate way.

It is an essential principle of our Christian faith that God knows what is better for us than we do. When we pray, we verbalize that belief by asking God to bless according to His will. Yet there is no doubt we have a definite agenda in our hearts when we come to our Father. If we are praying about sickness, we ask for healing. If we are praying for a good outcome for an event, we pray for success. For any number of circumstances, when we take them to God in prayer, we pray specifically. And we should. However, holding on too tightly to our own desires can be costly.

If anyone in the Old Testament was confident, it was David. As a young man, he saw everything as God’s doing, no matter what was happening around him. Someone else might take a negative view of the same situation, only focusing on the problem and the reasons why it could not be resolved. David, however, would focus on the positive and view it from the perspective of his trust in God.

Prayer is a normal part of a believer’s routine. We pray during worship services, for our food, before we fall asleep at night or when we wake up in the morning. We pray at Bible studies, in Sunday school and at prayer meetings. Yet when you look at these times spent “in prayer,” they are brief and short on content. Our busy lives make it easy to fall into the habit of grabbing a quick prayer time much like we grab a quick meal at a drive through. And those prayers can become like the dollar we put in a machine to buy a soft drink. Fast, easy and especially all about us. So what else is there? 

With the weather turning cooler and the days getting shorter, we know it is fall and the holidays are right around the corner. Starting with Halloween, we slide right into Christmas, almost missing the smell of the turkey cooking in the oven. Yes, that day of eating we call Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, Thanksgiving is increasingly becoming obscured by the materialism of Christmas. So we find ourselves thrust into the rush with hardly any time to celebrate, let alone remembering to be thankful.