The picture below is a mistake…

I didn’t mean to take it.

Somehow I pushed just the right buttons to take a picture of my phone’s lock screen on Christmas Day…

I was about to delete it… when I noticed the message hidden in the picture…

Do you see the message?

Look at the bottom of Santa’s beard…

“try again”

I had been trying…and trying… to open my smart phone with the fingerprint ID.

I couldn’t get it to work.

“try again,” the phone told me.

An unexpected message, buried in an unexpected picture…

A good message for a new year…

Try again.

Unhappy with our family lives?

Try again.

Unhappy with our careers?

Try again.

Unhappy with our relationship with God?

Try again…

Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually! 1 Chronicles 16:11

Keep trying…

for though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again… Proverbs 24:16

Not in our own strength…

But in the strength and grace of God…

…“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9 

Strength found through prayer…

Pray without ceasing… 1 Thessalonians 5:17

Pray without ceasing?

Perhaps that’s God’s way of telling us….

When it comes to prayer…

We should always…

Try again …

And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.  He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’  For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’”  And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says.  And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?  I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Luke 18:1-8

 

The original version of this post first appeared in January 2015