Where's God's FB page??

It's the second day of summer.  It's HOT.  All the kids are out of school and home, and we are LOVING life right now!

We've been to the zoo.  We've spent many mornings in the pool.  We spent a day at the science center.  We've been to the park.  We've played on the swingset.  We've gone out front to ride bikes and scooters in the driveway.  And through it all we've had a great time!!

So why, then, am I looking for God on FB?  Well, it seems that in the thrill of summer, the busyness of having 8 kids at the house all the time, the desire to spend good quality time together and expose the kids to new things, the joy of the carefree days... well... God sometimes gets put to the bottom of the list.

In those few free minutes, it's so much easier to grab the computer, lay back and check forums of other adoptive parents, or of other parents with children with special needs, or, to just scroll down that home page on FaceBook to see what everyone else is doing this summer.

Then I hit the pillow at night, exhausted from another long and full day with the kids.  Michael and I lay and play a word game on the ipad as we're falling asleep (quite literally, as I usually do fall asleep playing LOL).  And about 4am, I wake up, with a deep need to talk to God.  A desire to pray.  To read His Word.  To see what it is that God is up to... and to know where He wants ME to be.

So I pray.  And sometimes God shares a specific burden to pray for, or to begin praying on so that I can act.

My natural tendency with something that I regularly forget to do or put off because it's hard... is to try to find an 'easier' way to do it.  Some way that will remind me and make it a more simplified task.

But God isn't simple.  He doesn't fit in our box.  He doesn't even respect our timeline when we sit and say "I have 15 minutes for you now, God!"  Because he has eternity in His hands, and sometimes His message for us is going to take more than 15 minutes to share.

If we sat down at a friend's table when they'd invited us over and they sat down and started rattling off information they wanted us to know, things they wanted us to do, and telling us about their most recent activities (which we'd already read about on FB), then as a timer went off they said "ok, gotta go now, meatloaf is ready and I need to take the kids to the pool in 20 minutes. Bye!" We would probably be pretty perturbed.

So, my immediate thought when I woke one morning a few days ago was that I need to find a simple devotional-on-disc.  You know, something that I could keep in the stereo and hit "play track 1" on Monday, and "play track 2" on Tuesday all through the week, and month, and have someone else do the "work" in actually READING God's word, and have them just share with me what THEY got out of His word.

But really... REALLY?  Though I won't say it's not a decent idea (hey, maybe someone makes something like that already... I'm sure they do...).  It just doesn't take the place of time in God's word and in prayer asking Him what He has to tell Me.

After all, even though God doesn't use a FaceBook page to write out his thoughts with us, He did already write down everything that He wanted us to know about him all in one place.  It's called the Bible and it is a pretty interesting way to learn about God.

I'm also pretty sure that although God's not writing to us on FaceBook or hitting the "like" button, or leaving comments on our blogs with His thoughts on what we're doing... He IS reading along and seeing what we're doing... leading us and guiding us along the way.  If only we ask Him to.

How do you find alone time with God?  What "helps" do you use to communicate with Him?  A prayer book?  A specific Bible study?  A study group of others with a similar focus in life?  A specific time of day that's set aside?  Or do you wait for Him to wake you at 4am for that time alone? :)