Husband of the Daughter of the King

O God, how could You be so good to me? You are extravagant beyond all reason. Lying here beside me now, she glows in Your reflected light. Your holy peace rests on her closed eyelids. She radiates Your divine goodness even as she sleeps. Are you dancing with her in her dreams, Lord God, like you walked with Your children in the garden? 

This divine joy You have poured into her heart overflows to bless the world, but it blesses me first of all. She is a fountain of joy that you fill to water a parched earth. She is a sacred vessel in Your service, and yet You, extravagantly, permit me to bathe in her.

I love the way You love her. Your presence in her life is obvious. Your gentle, healing hand upon her heart is beautiful to see. You bless her with abundant life, and You satisfy her every need.

Lying here asleep she looks so delicate, powerless, fragile. But I know it is an illusion. In a few minutes she will wake, and you will array her again in her breastplate of righteousness and her belt of truth. In one hand she will take up the shield of her unwavering faith in Your divine goodness, and in her other hand you will place again the Spirit of the Living God, and any forces of darkness that may have been lurking in the shadows will draw back at the awesome sight of her.

She will sit up on the edge of the bed and wipe the sleep from her eyes. She will yawn and stretch and her hair will fall gracefully on her shoulders, and You will place upon her lovely head her helmet of salvation. And I will rest assured that no matter what the Father of Lies hurls at her today, she will be divinely protected from any mortal blow.

And thus armed by the Lord of Hosts, this mighty warrior in Your Kingdom will devote herself today to raising my children. She will put Your praises on their lips, and she will show them the abundant life that is found only in You, and she will reveal to them the face of a good and loving and compassionate God.

I have come to know You as Father, as Friend, as Lord, as Teacher. But as husband of Your precious daughter, I am also coming to know You as Father-in-Law. However close she and I may grow in our marriage, there will always be a relationship she has with You alone that I cannot enter. She has needs and desires that only You can meet, and that is just as it should be. 

You are her perfect Heavenly Father. You know me fully, and in spite of this You have still seen fit to entrust her to my care. You have given me a charge of high honor: to serve as the husband of the daughter of the King of the universe. O God, take me and use me however You please to reflect in human form Your divine love for her. Use my arms to hold her, and use my lips to encourage her. Give me the strength to ride courageously beside her in battle and to treat her every day like a daughter of the King.

Amen

Satisfy Us in the Morning

O God, how many times have I intended to meet You every day in morning prayer, and how many times have I stood You up? I hunger for intimacy with You; I crave the sound of Your voice. And at those times in my life when I have surrendered to Your desire to fill me, I have been blessed with immeasurable peace and joy from Your hand. So, why is it still so hard to offer You the beginning of my day?

I confess to You, Lord, that this desire to begin every day with You is beyond my reach. I can certainly renew my commitment to meet You each morning in prayer, but I know myself well enough to foresee that it isn't going to last a week. I will fail again, and the shame of the failure will come between us again, and I will be worse off than before I started. I want to meet You each morning, but I also don't want to make You yet another promise that I can't keep, and I don't want to turn my relationship with you into a goal-oriented personal challenge or a burdensome obligation.

You have graciously reassured me that my prayer time with You is not an obligation to be fulfilled in order to be good or faithful in Your sight, rather it is an opportunity for You to smother me in Your love. Your love for me is thick, and our prayer time together is life-giving and satisfying, so why do I forget You so often?

I know that it is within Your power to grant me divine strength in this. I know that I could ask You to bless me with strength to overcome the temptation to sleep in or to check my email or to waste my morning in worthless daydreams. But that isn't really what I want. I don't want the strength to discipline myself to meet You in prayer each morning. I don't really even desire to develop a spiritually-healthy morning habit.

What I really want is to wake up every morning to an intense Spirit-given craving for Your presence. I want to hunger for You like I hunger for my breakfast. I want to come to You each morning in prayer seeking fulfillment of an unmet desire. You have given me cravings for the other things I need life, food and water and air to breathe, and deep within my heart You have also planted a craving for You.

O God, by the power of Your Holy Spirit, magnify my craving for Your presence. I want to wake each morning with a burning desire to hear a word from Your lips and to bask in Your divine stillness. I want You to subdue all my other appetites until You have filled my cup to overflowing. And then I want You to put a song on my lips and joy in my heart that will carry me through the day. And I want to lay my head on my pillow at night hopeful and expectant that when I open my eyes tomorrow You will meet me again.

Amen.

Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Psalm 90:14