Hibernation is nature’s way of providing for whatever the bear, bees or even humans need. As long as I can remember, I’ve gone into hibernation. From the outside, some would call it other things — lazy, sleeping too much, wasting time — and for years I believed them and condemned myself for it. No longer. It is rejuvenation time. 

Last weekend as I stayed with my sister to keep her company after surgery, it was quiet. She loves to read, even with only one eye focusing, she was zipping through the three large print crime mysteries by an author she loves. The first night, I didn’t sleep well — waking up in a strange bed, with a 10-year-old’s glitter lava lamp as a night light shining specs occasionally around the room. Mostly I was content to just be there, comfortable, thinking and dreaming, until past noon when I finally heard stirring in the other rooms. 

Back home, I did the same thing. On a day when I had planned to do something I wanted to do, hibernation won out. And as I dreamed and thought about things past, future hopes, possibilities, considering things I might do toward the ideas floating in my mind — vision of sugarplums dancing in my head — naturally I talked to God. It’s so easy to get busy and fill time with anything but God, when the first and last thing we need to do is include him in our thoughts and prayers.

Seasons of prayer change as Christians mature. Intercession is a calling and yet we are all called to pray. I really do love spontaneous prayer. First you have to be filled with the Word, because what God fulfills is what he has promised. If you don’t know what he has promised, how can you stand on it, faithfully?  

Smith Wigglesworth was a prayer warrior and healer. He touched and changed lives for the gospel all over the world. I’m slowly reading his book. Like another book, “Reese Howell: Intercessor,” I am encouraged by the faith these men and so many others have shown and how they carry it into the marketplace to bless thousands of others. They believed the words of Jesus.

“Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father,” John 14:12, New International Version. 

Jesus hibernated, in a way, though who can say what he did when he went off by himself to pray. Only God knows, but you can bet they communed. As Luke 5:16 said, “But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” He went up on the mountainside, to a solitary place, he even prayed, twice, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” 

How many of us would so easily have walked the road to submission with death and pain knowingly ahead? Yet, he listened and obeyed.

As the new year begins and heads are filled with hopes, new resolutions, promises that will be hard to keep without faith and commitment, I know my first priority is to continue and increase my time with Heavenly Father. I can do nothing without him. In all the years of planning and hoping, striving and workaholism, the greatest things I’ve accomplished were not by my own hands, but the mere happenstance of circumstances, people, places and things — ideas that were spawned by the perfect storm — creativity from the Great Creator, opportunity by Jehovah Jirah my provider and blessings from people I may never have known except for a divine encounter, and we all knew it. 

Make your list of priorities, but be sure you take time to hibernate, pray without ceasing and always acknowledge the hand of God in circumstances you never could have pulled off on your own — or without a little help from friends and strangers, too. They may be sent by God.

 VICKY BRANTONis Teche Life editor of The Daily Iberian.