6 years of 6:05am breakfast

I have to admit, I love college. I love my school, my friends, my fellowship, everything, however I do miss the daily conversations with my dad, Nagi Basta, every morning before school. I still call my family regularly, however it’s not quite the same as sitting down with him at our dining table, talking about what we were going to do that day, asking his advice on everything from school, relationships, business, culture and God. Sometimes we would just silently sit and enjoy breakfast at 6:05amwhen our house was still quite (once my mother and sister get up things get loud). This was our routine for about 6 years before I left for Davis. With these moments my heavenly Father was using my earthly father to teach me how to pray.

A lot of you have referenced John 15:4-5, and so shall I. “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing,”. All those mornings I spent with my dad, he taught me how to be a man of God, he taught me so much, and there is not a doubt in my mind he helped make me a better person.  But more so have I seen and felt myself grow exponentially with my time spent in God’s presence, talking about everything, or sometimes just sitting in His presence, soaking up that parental love that emanates like fire from Him. Praying is a way in which God prunes us, forcing us to face Him with our struggles, fears, doubts and sin. In the devo Steph Fry is quoted as saying ”so often my desire to not meet God in prayer is in order to “evade” what God may have for me,” and this is so true, if we do not go to God in silent prayer, how can we allow Him to shape us and prune us and allow us to bear the fruit that He desires us to bear? For me unless I sit down at the dining room table and chat it up with God during breakfast and throughout the day,  I find myself more often running away from God’s plan rather than towards it. I read somewhere that “prayer is the catalyst for transformation”, and to me that really resonates, when we are in constant prayer (not just every morning or night, but constantly thought the day) God works in our hearts and does amazing things that I can’t even imagine until God does them.

Just one more thought, when I come home for breaks when I have the chance, I love spending time with my dad but too often I forget how much our time together means to him. And it’s crazy to know that God desires so much to just spend time with us. In Matthew 25 it reads “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” To know that we are precious in God’s eyes and that he desires to be with us, I don’t even know what to write, I’m speechless. And you know speechless gratitude is an amazing feeling.