Praying together

We were supposed to go  to my brother's wedding last weekend, but a certain young boy came down with an intense bout of the stomach flu.  In the unexpected time at home, there was a chance to catch up on some things, and open up a book that was on the to-be-read list, Couples Who Pray.  I didn't expect to come away from that reading with a strong feeling that this is what the next step for us was supposed to be.  An intentional forty days of prayer as a couple ~ and so it begins.  God willing, may it just be the beginning of forty weeks, forty years of praying together each day.  In that simple, yet profoundly intimate act of joining our hearts and voices together before the creator of all, we find ourselves opening up to Him and His plan is a new way. This is new for us.  While we have prayed for each other before, it is often in silence.  And though we've prayed with each other a few times in our 13+ years of marriage, it has been random and isolated.

Humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and in His good time He will honor you.  Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about what happens to you.    1 Peter 5:6-7

In these first short days, it already feels that God is working.  That first day, I read again of the way God often uses 40 day periods to prepare someone for His purposes, and I wonder what 40 days could mean for us.

Day 1 ~ Shared prayer at the end of the day turns a negative, snappy, gloomy day around for the better.  We talk, really talk, for the first time in a couple weeks.  Has it just been a couple weeks?  The lack of communication makes it feel far longer.  I find the coloring page that says "Abigail is wise."

Day 2 - The negative undercurrents threaten to pull me down ~ isolation, disconnect, self-pity.  He prays for me first, when I can barely make words myself through the tears.  I stumble across the word simcha - joy in Hebrew, and read that it is important in Jewish philosophy because when a person is happy, is filled with joy, they are much more capable of serving God and fulfilling their daily activities than when depressed or upset.  Crying out for wisdom from our Father, I flip open my Bible and it lands on Esther 2:15 . . . When the turn came for Esther (the girl Mordecai had adopted, the daughter of his uncle Abihail) to go to the king . . .


Day 3 - Possible answers to a prayer about daily life emerged today.  Seeking wisdom on a financial decision.  Prayed together again, and wondered why it felt so foreign to consider doing this (praying together) just a few days ago.  Time spent in conversation with a young friend searching for answers in her own life.  My FB status is about our Operation Christmas Child boxes.  That brings up a link to their page in the sidebar, and I click Like.

Day 4 - First thing that I see when opening up my FB page this morning is an Operation Christmas Child update (yes, the one that I just liked last night.)  It reads:

In Zimbabwe, Abigail, 13 yrs old, said "Thank you for the gift box I received.  I'm talented in drawing . . . .I received my gift box and was shocked!  Exactly the drawing equipment I needed was inside! . . . Today, I have joy and understand that Jesus is my provider.

God brought a blog post to my attention that was meant for a dear friend, and used me to pass it along to her.  Feeling humbled again to be used by Him!   We pray together again, and wind up looking at a possible opportunity for giving through Sixty Feet next month, struck by how incredibly blessed we are with material possessions and at the same time how they can blind us to the really important things of life.  And it brings up hard questions.  We feel a little bit like that scene in the movie The Matrix where taking the blue pill lets you stay in your comfortable belief in the illusion, while taking the red pill opens your eyes to the reality (often unseen) going on around us.  In this bond of prayer, though, we feel that we're tiptoeing towards the door together.

Day 5 - God wakes me up in the wee, wee hours of the morning with such congestion that I can't sleep.  Instead, it's time for some devoted time with Him that I have missed recently.  Major chunks from my daily Bible reading get copied down, both the New Testament passages pertaining to my attitudes and much of Psalm 107.  After reading last night about a facility that is essentially a prison for children and the efforts to improve conditions there, the lines from Psalm 107:10, 13-16, 22 glared out to me in the predawn light:

Some sat in darkness and deepest gloom, imprisoned in iron chains of misery . . . "Lord, help" they cried in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress.  He led them from the darkness and deepest gloom; he snapped their chains.  Let them praise the Lord for his great love and the wonderful things he has done for them.  For he broken down their prison gate of bronze; he cut apart their bars of iron. . . Let them offer sacrifices of thanksgiving and sing joyfully about his glorious acts.

As I clicked online, there was a perfect blog entry about the beauty in waiting, followed by another blog entry about patience, which led to my getting to share our Abigail story with an online friend who was inquiring what God was doing in my life. A quick phone call with a friend to share some of what God is bringing our way.

And then one more blog entry comes my way this afternoon, from a Compassion blogger  traveling in Ecuador.  I read of poverty and our wealth blinding us, and then it comes:

I remember to breathe – remember that it all can begin just one beautiful child at a time, one small, necessary sacrifice at a time.

After the last potatoe eye is buried like a seed in good soil, I take Rosa’s neice’s hand, Abigail and we walk up to eat, and this shaping a life into the Cross-life, could it begin by just simply stretching out a hand?

I watch Abigail across the table too.
I pray too.                                                                             - Ann Voskamp

Again.  Abigail.   Lord, you are working in the wait.  We pray in those last moments before sleep, keep preparing us and molding us to be vessels of Your love.