Devote yourself to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.
Colossians 4:2 (Life Application Study Bible)
Jesus Tells us…My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways and thoughts higher than yours. When you come to spend time with Me, remember who I really am. I am the King of kings and Lord of lords! Never stop being amazed at being able to talk with the King of the entire universe, anytime, anyplace. As you spend time in My Presence, I am training you to think My thoughts. My Spirit goes to work inside you. Sometimes He speaks to you through certain Bible verses. And other times He allows you to hear Me “speak” into your mind. Either way, this training strengthens you and prepares you for whatever you will face.
Jesus Concludes…Take time to listen to My voice. Give Me this small sacrifice of your time, and I will bless you far more than you could ever imagine.
Colossians 4:2; Isaiah 55:8-9; Psalm 116:17 Study Notes
Footnotes Colossians 4:2, Have you ever grown tired of praying for something or someone? Paul says we should devote ourselves to prayer and be watchful in prayer. Our persistence in prayer expresses our faith that God answers prayer. Faith shouldn’t fade if the answers come slowly, for the delay may be God’s way of working out his will in our lives. When you feel tired of praying, remember that God sees you, knows what you need, always listens, and wants to do a great work through you. He will always answer you, maybe not in ways you expect, but in ways that he knows are best.
Passage Isaiah 55:8-9, 8“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Footnotes Isaiah 55:8-9, The people of Israel were foolish to act as if they knew what God was thinking and planning. His knowledge and wisdom are far greater than any human’s. we are foolish to try to fit God into our mold, to make his plans and purposes conform to ours. Instead, we must strive to fit into his plans.
Passage Psalm 116:17, I will sacrifice a thank offering to you and call on the name of the LORD.
Footnotes Psalm 116:1-2, God loves to respond to us, so you can always reach him. He bends down and listens to your voice. He gets on your level and looks in your eyes. Even though he has millions of children, he can focus on you totally. This writer’s love for the Lord had grown because he had experienced answers to his prayers. Take time to recall the many times God has answered your prayers. If you are discouraged, remember that God is near, listening carefully to every prayer and answering each one in his timing to give you, his best.
Jesus Tells Us is from the Jesus Calling 365 devotions for kids.
THE WORLD…we see history
In the Word and the World, we see His Story, Ground Zero
The rubble pile at Ground Zero was 10 stories high, but nothing was identifiable. Three weeks after the 9/11 attacks, and the scene in lower Manhattan was defined by this enormous mound of smoldering destruction.
Anne Bybee struggled to find one thing of significance. “It was just this mangled rubble pile of nothing,” Bybee said. “I kept looking at the pile and thinking I would recognize something, a computer monitor, a chair, anything.
Bybee was on her third day of the work as part of the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) Mission Support Team, providing logistical support to the Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMAT) who cared for rescue workers at Ground Zero.
Walking the Ground Zero perimeter for about 16 hours a day, she found herself almost numb. A sense of hopelessness kicked in as she kept staring at this pile of madness.
But then, out of nowhere, she finally saw it.
The WORD…we see Jesus, His Story!
‘I’ve never seen that before’
Bybee stared at it for a few minutes. Or maybe it was an hour. She lost track of time. She noticed a worker standing nearby and asked him a question. “Did they do that on purpose?” Bybee said. In his thick Bronx accent, the man quickly responded, “yeah, they hit it with two planes.” That wasn’t Bybee’s question.
A cross had naturally formed from the mangled remains of the Twin Towers, and despite walking past this spot many times on the backside of Ground Zero, Bybee had somehow missed the imagery. As did the worker, “oh, man, I’ve never seen that before.”
The image of the cross was more than a coincidence for Bybee, more than two fallen beams. The voice of the lord was speaking to her.
You can have peace in the midst of tragedy and suffering. Encounter the forgiveness and deep love of God.
“As I was staring at that, I got a sense of peace,” Bybee said. “I got a very strong message. That message was, ‘you are not alone. I am here.”
The longer she looked at the cross, the more she was moved. There was other material wrapped around it, that resembled the clothes that Jesus would have worn.
The steam in the background represented the devastation for the 9/11 families, while Bybee saw a ray of light coming in from the left, which was actually a stream of water gushing in. “I couldn’t move for a long time,” she said. “I felt that message was not only given to me, but also to the people that I was working with and in contact with.”
Opening the envelope form Long’s Drug store near her home in Roseville California, Bybee braced herself. Five days earlier, she had dropped off the film to be processed. More than three weeks had passed since her encounter with the cross in the rubble.
Would the picture do it justice? Would the image be as powerful as she remembered? Had she embellished it in her own mind? This was a disposable camera, after all, long before digital cameras were mainstream. “I went through the photos and was just speechless. I really was,” Bybee said. “The more you study it, the more you see.?
The iconic photo was picked up by CatholicPlanet.com, and a mega-church in Seattle, used it to recreate a real-life 9/11 stage for their Easter service, which reportedly drew 25,000 people.
“I didn’t realize the photo had caught as much as it did,” Bybee said. “It brought me right back to that moment.”
Of all the images seared in Bybee’s brain, from her two-and-a-half- week experience at Ground Zero, the first thing that pops into her mind isn’t always this image of the cross.
In fact, sometimes it’s not an image at all.
“The memory of the smell is still with me,” she said. “That smell was constant. You knew what the smell represented.” Bybee also thinks about the owner of the deli, who was just staring into space. “He was just standing there, and I asked if I could come in,” she recalled. “His name was Steve. He shared his story with me.” Steve had sent all his employee’s home after the plane hit the first tower, and shortly after that, a beam, “25 to 35 feet long”, crashed into his building. “He, said, what am I going to do? Bybee said. “I wonder what happened to him and his business.”
Growing up in Nevada as the sixth of 10 children, Bybee knows a thing or two about chaos. But as an experienced emergency planning analyst for the state of California, she also knows what it takes to handle an emergency situation.
Bybee is a first-hand witness of the impact 9/11 had on the nation. “So much has changed in our country because it happened,” she said. “We are much better prepared for disaster responses than we were then.
“Every aspect from small, local communities to the federal government has learned from it.”
A ministry was born out of the ashes of 9/11. The Billy Graham Rapid Response Team deploys crisis-trained volunteer chaplains to offer spiritual and emotional care in the midst of disaster. More than 1,500 chaplains in the U.S, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom stand ready to deploy with the hope and love of Christ.
Bybee has traveled around the country giving lectures on emergency preparedness, using her 9/11 photos as training tools, especially in the years immediately following the attacks. “Part of me felt like it wasn’t appropriate to take pictures of things I saw there,” she said. “It’s interesting, I was looking at another 9/11 presentation and so many of the pictures that are published are from a distance, the building on fire, the building collapsing, the smoke, the skyline.
“The photos that we took are literally up close and personal.” And the photo of the Cross? That’s still in her power-point. And whenever she comes across that image, Bybee pauses, if only for a second. “I almost feel like I was a medium to capture this image,” she said.
Source: Billy Graham https://billygraham.org/gallery/cross-at-ground-zero/