Just In Time

Years ago, Christian singer Gloria Gaither told a story about washing dishes one ordinary evening.  When supper was over, everyone in the family suddenly disappeared, and she was left with cleaning up the kitchen by herself.  She admits that she was both angry and wallowing in self-pity (a volatile combination) as she scrubbed pots and washed plates.  Steam, perhaps, was coming out of both her ears.

She was about half-way finished with the task when her youngest son ran into the kitchen.  “MOM!!! You gotta come quick.”

Gloria was accustomed to Benjy’s bursts of energy and urgency.  Without even looking at him, she said, “I’m cleaning up from supper.  I’ll be there in a minute.”

He ran outside the back door.

Within a few seconds, he rushed back inside.  “MOM!!! You’ve got to come NOW.”

“Is anyone hurt?”

“No, you just NEED to come NOW.”  He raced back outside, leaving the door wide open.

With a humpf, Gloria dried her hands on a dish towel and reluctantly followed him.

Standing on the deck, Benjy frantically pointed out into the backyard.  Gloria glanced over and then stood astonished by the most beautiful sunset she had ever seen, bathing the entire horizon in radiant colors beyond description.  In another minute, she would have missed the entire sacred display.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We don’t often face prayer with such urgency.  We’ll respond to a request with “I’ll be praying for you.”  When indeed, God nudges us to pray NOW with the person.

God is not limited by time, nor by our response to Him, but in our hesitation or lack of response, not unlike Gloria, we are often the ones who miss out on the wonder.

I was reminded the other day of receiving a phone call from a friend years ago towards the end of a class at the YMCA.  I waited a few minutes until class was over to return her call, sitting in the parking lot on a frigid morning.  As my friend poured out a desperate situation with her extended family, I found myself saying to her, “Let’s pray right now,” not something I would have ordinarily offered at the time.   I prayed out loud, not fully understanding the magnitude of the situation, but prayed immediately for the situation at hand.

After the amen, my friend said, “You prayed the words I didn’t have.”

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.  Romans 8. 26

And sometimes God uses us to do that.

Seize the moment, whenever it occurs, sending a text when God nudges us, reaching out with a phone call, or praying on the spot in a parking lot.

It does not matter to God if we pray now or later.  God is alive and active beyond the boundaries of time.  It is not that God will hear something different if we pray immediately, or in the middle of the night, or later.  But in praying with someone in the moment, it is not just what God hears, but what is heard by those we are praying with.  There is a recognized magnitude in praying together in the now.

There is nothing more encouraging than knowing right now in this present moment at my time of need or struggle, someone is praying, and God is responding.

Henri J. M. Nouwen, Dutch priest, professor, author and theologian, reflected:  “Then, even while life continues to seem harried, while it continues to have hard moments, we say, ‘Something good is happening amid all this.’  We get glimpses of how God might be working out His purpose in our days.”

Through prayer, God invites us into His ongoing wonders.

And when we don’t pray, God still brings about His purposes.  We are just the ones who miss out on recognizing His Presence.  God sets in motion His hidden order of the world, turning the invisible into the visible.  …Who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. Romans 4. 17  

In these dog days of a hot Tennessee summer with near-record temperatures, I have learned that if I’m going to run today, I need to go now in the cool of the morning. 

When the opportunity arises, or when God nudges my thoughts, I need not hesitate, but if I am going to pray about it, I need to pray now. A whole lot of things are just waiting to jam into my day and whine for my attention.  And then, what about the praying? Well, let me just finish the dishes first.

God doesn’t wear a stop watch, as if time is running out, but in praying, there is always an element of urgency.  Praying is rarely the shortest (or quickest) distance between two points.  The critical factor is not when we pray, but that we pray.

Through praying, God invites us into the wildness of His glory….the God who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy… Isaiah 57. 15

I may not know what to do, but I can pray.  I can pray now.

Leave A Trace

 

I don’t recall when I first found my great grandmother Olivia’s Bible in a box of old books and photos, but it altered my heart.  As I carefully turned the fragile pages, the binding beginning to unravel, I noticed some pencil markings in the margin.  It indicated to me that Olivia did not just possess a Bible, she owned it.

On one page somewhere in the Old Testament, I deciphered her fading penciled words, “Praying today for the generations to come.”

And I realized when she prayed more than one hundred years earlier, that included me.

This tiny little faithful woman in the wilds of Kentucky left a trace.

Some answers to prayer take a long time.  I think somehow she knew that.

The blessing to me was that she had not just prayed, but she had written down those prayers.  Prayer takes on new dimensions when we step off the trail of praying silently in our hearts.  When we pray out loud with others, God shares His glory with more people than we can know.  When we write down our needs, praise, and coming before Him, God multiplies its effects not in answers, but through generations.

Underlining our prayers in ink permanently alters our chemistry.  It turns a verbal exercise into a tactile experience.  It allows us to pray differently.  As we pray, and as we write down our prayers, the Holy Spirit strengthens us and often changes the course of our prayers.  Pray one thing and the next comes to the surface.

A month or so ago, I came across a prayer journal from many years ago.  As I glanced through it, one incident for which I prayed reminded me that yes, it was as difficult as I remembered.  How hard it was.  How bleak it appeared.  How frightened I was. 

But lingering fear is not designed to defeat, but to keep us before Him.

Because those prayers were in writing, I realized how over time, God is not limited at all.  God redeems.  God has seamlessly woven something spectacular through what we may only grasp a glimpse.  Not a once and done “answer,” but God’s redeeming far beyond our lifetimes. 

Our memories of an event may diminish over time, but we are reshaped by praying.  Just as physical training equips us with muscle memory, prayer strengthens us and draws us ever toward Him.

All those notebooks and scraps of paper comprise not just a chronicle of God’s faithfulness for the next generation, but a narrative for those who surround us that God is real.  Over and over, this story that never ends is not about us, but declares to others that “this is God.”

So grateful that the prayers of ordinary men and women throughout Scripture were recorded as a witness of His Presence.  Behold, God is my helper; the LORD is the upholder of my life.  Psalm 54.4.  Indeed, the book of Psalms is a treasury of prayers.

Writing down our prayers does not hold God accountable to us, but for us to respond to Him.  We write down the cries of our hearts, our concerns, and our fears.  And the resulting joy is seeing how God unfolds His glory in it.  Most often beyond what we can imagine.   

God listens.  God responds.  God multiplies.  God redeems.   When we pray, what emerges is not just a good story, but incredible, seemingly unrelated sacred designs that converge throughout eternity.

Write it down.  Pray a little differently. It doesn’t change God.  But it just may change us.  And it may encourage someone else who may be reading those prayers a hundred years from now.

Leave a trace.

The Other Peloton: Lessons from the Tour de France

 

The Tour de France composes a picture of beauty, flowing like a colorful river over the landscape, among the fields of sunflowers, through medieval towns, and majestically tackling the mountains. 

For so many years, I was totally unaware of what was actually going on.  I saw a mass of cyclists battling it out in scenic France every hot July, covering 2200 miles in 23 days.  And it appeared to my eyes the ultimate competition for individual cyclists.

But the actuality is that the Tour is not every man for himself, but for each other.  There are 22 teams of eight riders each, strategically positioned, trained and equipped to support each other, to extend help to designated team members, to give up one’s water bottle, to take pulls on the long steep climbs, and to sacrifice for another’s glory…and sometimes more than that. 

As a team, they don’t just wear matching jerseys.  But each is in his place and desire to get one’s teammate across the flatlands, up those impossible slopes, and to the finish line in Paris.

The cyclists on the Tour have trained together to ride in community and to build their strengths from within.  The peloton is the main field or concentrated group of cyclists in the race, those who are, as one description pointed out, are “bunched together.”  No better description of fellowship.

If you are going to survive at all in that race, you can’t go it alone.

God never intended for us to go it alone either.  Self-sufficiency is the ultimate defeat.

Prayer is how we love God.  But it is also how we love each other.  Prayer stitches us together and connects us on ever deepening levels.

…for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. 2 Corinthians 1. 11

As we pray together, there is no distinction between what is your need and what is mine.  We struggle together.  We rejoice together.  We weep together.  We pray for each other.  We hand each other a needed water bottle of encouragement.  We take a pull on a long steep ascent that is not even our own.  We stop, pull out the bandages and extend a hand to get each other back on the bike.

Even yesterday in watching the livestream of the Tour, I heard one of the announcers proclaim, “Cooperation in a big group bears fruit.”

Because we pray for each other, profound connections are being woven between each of us and with God, extending far beyond the specific need or a request on the table.

Prayer does not set anything into motion, nor awaken God, but makes us aware of God’s hand already redeeming the past, the now, and the next curve on our path.  God goes with us.  He goes before us.

Prayer is the fuel of relationships.  Praying together is the vital link in order that we don’t miss His wonder among us.

Praying together sets up Ebenezer stones like flags along our route.  Remember when we prayed about that?  Remember how God responded?  Remember how God redeemed? Remember how even as we prayed, God revealed His help in amazing ways?

Prayer magnifies His Name over anything we can do ourselves.  Something supernatural happens through prayer.  But then again, that’s the only way God works.

Prayer doesn’t just connect us to God, but to each other, even to people we do not know, yet. Someday on the other side, we will somehow recognize someone and know we prayed for them.  Or they prayed for us.

And the people of Israel said to Samuel, “Do not cease to cry out to the LORD our God for us, that He may save us from the hand of the Philistines.”  1 Samuel 7.8

There are many people on my prayer list who have no idea I am praying for them. 

Inviting others to join us in praying allows a growing multitude to share in how God unfolds our situations, how God provides strength in impossible places, how we all struggle with something and yet God is even there.  Praying with and for each other invites others to come and know Him more.

From within a community of pray-ers, a deeper level of conversation emerges, a deeper way of loving each other, deeper connections that build up the Body of Christ in immense ways.  Praying is how we love each other in community.  You are not a part of a prayer peloton.  You are a member. A multitude of others will benefit from your prayers and the gifts and strengths you are given.

We know the difference in those who say “I’ll pray for you,” and those who actually do.  There are those who hand me a water bottle in my time of drought, even before I know I need it.

Yes, indeed, we come before our Father in solitude and the quietness of our hearts.  But also being engaged in a community of prayer.  Pray for one another.  Know that He is among us.

Lift up the chorus, cheer from the sidelines like the French, ride alongside the big boys, pray without ceasing.  We are all in this peloton bunched together. Just as God intended.

For where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I among them.  Matthew 18. 20