Way back in olden times, (2006) I was volunteering at the Sundance Film Festival. Early in the morning I went to the cyber-cafe and sat down in front of a computer. These were the days before getting email on your cellphone (but yes, we did have running water and electricity back then). I noticed that the woman next to me was all covered up and had sunglasses on. It was obviously a celebrity trying to go incognito. So being the wiseass I am, I tried to provoke her, not physically, but I just did the things that a mere mortal should never do to a celebrity. I looked her in the eyes, I adjusted my chair, I asked her to borrow a pen. She slammed one down, “Here!” she said. I am not exactly sure who it was, I thought it might have been Angelina Jolie (since the night before someone had said she was around) but thinking about it later on, I think it was Charlize Theron  since  she  was quite  tall  and  had  blonde  hair.

Now, recently, I ordered some clothes from a certain website. When I got the clothes, none of them fit. So I called the customer support line, no answer. I sent them emails, no reply. I tried again and again. When I finally did get someone, they told me I had the wrong department and I got transferred three times. Now, I don’t think they saw me the same as the woman in the computer lab but they obviously saw me as a nobody was well.

I like to think back on that and compare it with when I address the Creator of the Universe.

Dear God…

“Dear” is a basic salutation in the English language. I am not sure why but I use it all the time, even when the person I am writing to is not,”dear” to me. This is not the case in other languages. Most languages have a familiar salutation and an informal salutation. In Russian, for you to call someone “Dear” in a letter is a sign of an incredibly deep relationship. This is also true in French and German. There is an equivalent in Portuguese’s Caro. In Wikipedia (Wikipedia always needs to be cross-checked), look up the word, “salutation” and you will see different salutations in different languages. I am not sure why we say “dear” but its interesting that we do!

Dear God…

However, the context that I am discussing right now is our innate desires to praise God. I believe that it is more accurate to say that our brains and bodies long to address the creator of everything. Our souls and hearts and minds long to praise the Holy One.  Maybe because He is so available to us and so much more interested in talking to us than a Hollywood actress or a hard-to-reach customer service department, we consider prayer to be less important or so easy it can’t be real.

But that is just us forgetting the sacrifice that the Lord has made in order for us to approach Him! 

Try contemplating just those two words though. To me, they are amazing as I believe that I am addressing the maker of, EVERYTHING. It is amazing to me that we have such ability to do that. Just spend some minutes thinking about that sometime.

Take some time right now to contemplate that: Dear God….

Hebrews 4:16 – Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

—————————————————————W.