Daily Guideposts 2016: 7-Day Reading PlanSample

I’m struggling to like someone. I can’t say who; I can’t even tell you the details of why I don’t like her.

“To interest or engage or move a reader, you need to be specific,” I’m always telling my creative writing students. “Give the details. Be concrete.” But you can’t be concrete if what you write might embarrass someone. You can’t even be concrete about yourself on some topics.

Consider sin and temptation. Even among those who believe that we’re all sinners, all tempted, only the tamest of sins and temptations (misspeaking, white lies, and minor covetousness, to name a few) are appropriate for open discussion. Some sins you can’t even take up with your closest friends. Talking about specific sins or temptations reveals that I have them, and I generally like to pretend I don’t.

I was thinking about this problem at church this morning as I read the prayer requests. All of them were for struggles unrelated to sin: sickness, grief, selling a house, safety of soldiers deploying, finding a job. Nobody requested prayer for an addiction or to be a better parent or spouse or for help loving a neighbor or, God forbid, an enemy.

The apostle Paul’s writings reach me best when he speaks of his personal struggles. When he says he does what he shouldn’t do and doesn’t do what he should, for example. Or he mentions that thorn in his flesh. (He, too, was reluctant to specify.) Surely we all have thorns. Perhaps, though, that’s what the occasional “unspoken request” on the prayer list means. Just in case, I lifted up a heavy little prayer for them—and myself.

Lord Jesus, Holy Father, have mercy upon me, a sinner.

—Patty Kirk

Digging Deeper: 2 Corinthians 12:6–10