Please Pray for Me.

We hear it all the time in the church. At least I hope that we do. We ask a group if there are any prayer requests. And, it seems, there always are a few. Sometime there are very deep needs that require our prayer attention, sometimes we get the feeling that we, as a group, are just trying fill up this spot on the schedule like a disc jockey fills dead air when the traffic report isn't on time. Aren't we supposed to say something? If we don't have any prayer requests something must be wrong! Right?

I spent many years enjoying the fellowship of a group of people that devoutly prayed for each other. Every week when we met prayer requests were noted and prayed for. We were a very close group and we could be honest with each other about any need or any praise that we had (both are equally important in my mind). Each time we met, one elderly lady in the group would always have a prayer request. At times it was almost irritating in how trite some of the request seemed to be. You know the type. The one person that causes everyone in the group to groan inwardly when they stand to say a prayer request. "Please pray for my husband's co-worker's daughter who has a cold." "Please pray for my cousin Joey's son's friend who's car broke down." "Please pray for my sister Verna's cat, Fluffy" Well, OK. I don't think she ever asked for prayer for anybody's pet, but you get the idea.

But how does God see it? Does God have a ranking scale of how important a prayer is? Sometimes it seems that we do. I really don't think God has a priority box and a "round-to-it" file. But sometimes we come to prayer thinking that our problems aren't big enough to warrant God's time. Praise the Lord! If that is the biggest problem you have, please, don't go out and look for trouble just to "improve" your prayer life. But, sometimes we place those same values on the prayer requests of our fellow believers. That is where we walk on dangerous ground.

God implores us in his word to bring all of our burdens to him. Who am I to judge the burdens of this fellow believer? Do I actually think them weaker than I that they bring such small problems to the attention of the group? Are they less secure in their walk with God that they feel a need to bring every little detail to the throne of God through prayer? Weaker? Less secure? There is a weaker one here, but it is not my prayer warrior friend. What incredible strength there is in trusting God with every detail. My friend has a need and desires the prayers of fellow believers. Needs for prayer that have been placed upon their heart in a unique way for the glory of God. Those needs are driven by an incredible faith that no problem is so big, or so small, that it can't be handled by our God. Who am I to judge?

Whether it be the salvation of a friend, or the healing of Uncle Paul's bunion, there is no problem too big for God's help or so small that God would not be concerned. If you feel a burden on your heart to pray for cousin Joey's son's friend or whatever it may be, that burden is there for a purpose and should never be ignored. So pray for me, my friend. Pray that I will see the strength in weakness and have the faith to trust even in the little things in life.

Gentle musings on a lazy day

My Morning Walk
By D M Hyde

The mist settles on the wayward dell
I would not have come this way
But for the loon, forlorn it calls
On this misty quiet day

So silent the world this misty morn
The cry it calls me on.
I must find this bugle sound
This sound of the loon, forlorn

The mossy green, the scented air
The trees - giant brambles low
On ahead the loon it calls
What reason, I do not know

The babbling brook, soft to speak
Ahead my goal surmised
Again the call echoes the sky
Forlorn, alone, alive.

My quiet walk has brought me far
Through mist and morning tones
In meadow open ‘fore me now
Unseen, the bond it grows.

Silent now I settle down
Like mist upon the pond
Soon I see him drifting by
My loon, my forlorn song.

God must be busy

I heard a song on the radio the other day. I don't know if it was a new song or if it was just the first time I had heard it. The artist sang about all of the troubles in the world. About the war, crime, gangs, problems at home and on and on. Needless to say, it was not a happy uplifting song, but it wasn't meant to be happy and uplifting.

What really troubled me about what they were singing was their reason for all of these problems: God must be busy. The artist sang about how terrible life is and how he keeps praying about things, but the problems don't disappear. God must be busy. Even going so far as to say that he is nothing more than a grain of sand in the eyes of God, that the creator of the universe doesn't have time to answer his prayers. God must be busy.

If I remember my Sunday school Bible lessons correctly, God knows the number of hairs on our head and the number of sparrows on the earth (Luke 12:6b-7). Do they think God is busy counting hairs and sparrows? What is it that is keeping God so busy if he doesn't have time to answer our prayers? Maybe He's playing hand ball with St. Peter, or a Father / Son outing on the other side of the universe.

By the time the song was over I found myself fighting that urge to yell at the radio. You know the feeling. Not an angry yelling, but a "what are you talking about, would you please wake up and start making sense" type of conversation. The trouble here isn't the size of the song writer's problems. It is the size of their God. Mr. Brookes and Mr. Dunn have told the world through their song that, to borrow from Dr. Seuss, That they are Horton and their god is a Whovillian. Of course the problems the Who's had wasn't that they weren't answering, it was that no one was listening. Hmmm..

Psalm 34: 17 tells us that God hears the prayers of the righteous And delivers them from their troubles. A wise friend once taught me that prayer is a conversation with God. A conversation is a two way street: talking and listening. This song gave us the artist's wish list prayer to God, which that's OK. It is good to ask God for peace in troubled times and for answers to your problems. But if you aren't going to wait long enough to listen for the answer you might as well be talking to a wall.

If you believe what the Bible says, then you believe that God is all powerful and all knowing. He knows our past, present and future. The part where we all seem to have a problem is that God also knows what is best for us better than we do. Sometimes we don't like God's answer to our prayer. Sometimes he doesn't wave his magic wand and make our problems go away. Sometimes he answers our prayers, and the answer is "no". Ouch!

But who am I to question God? I don't think God is the one here that is too busy. God is there, listening and answering. Are we waiting around long enough to hear? Are we willing to grow and accept the answers God gives us? For the sake of our world, let's hope so.