The bright and lovely flower, calendula, has been blooming late into the fall this year. I like to dry the flower. It makes a tea that is soothing to mucous membranes. It can be used to make a healing salve. I have directions for making the salve in a prior post.
My week has focused on drying herbs, baking and cooking, and daily Bible study. Currently I am in the book of Nehemiah. In the first chapter Nehemiah offers a prayer.
“O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father’s house have sinned.
We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses.
Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples, but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.’ They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand.
O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, Nehemiah 1:5-11
We can learn from Nehemiah. It is time for us to be devoted to prayer.
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