In my shortcomings

I was at a worship service last night as part of an Emmaus walk. After the service, a woman, who had been a pilgrim on the first walk on which I served as a member of the conference room team, stopped me. She asked if she could speak to me.

She is at the beginning of a health scare, and was asking me to pray for her. She said that she hadn't told anyone else, but that she felt like I was there just for her that night. She knew that I would pray for her.

Do you ever feel like a fraud? Why would this woman single me out? Believe me, I do not have what I would call a disciplined prayer life. In fact, I remember on her walk, telling her that I needed to pray more. I do need to pray more. It's not something that I do often enough.

I was reading from the Upper Room Disciplines this morning. The author wrote, "However polished our pretenses, false piety is no more acceptable than plain wickedness." Ever feel like a fraud?

But the devotional went on to talk about putting on Jesus Christ. I occurred to me that perhaps I am coming at this from the wrong angle. I'm seeing how much I lack. Instead, perhaps I need to see how God can transform me, change me, grow me into a relationship with him. Perhaps it is in the realization that I am not who she needs me to be, that I can allow God to be who he is, instead.

I don't need to be the person I think that she thinks that I am (get that?). I can't be. What I can do, though, is put on Christ. I can allow God to be God.

Perhaps true piety -- a true relationship with God -- is a gift of grace. We don't earn it. We just receive it. I can pray; I will pray, and I will, in my shortcomings, let God be God.