Dancing on Prayer

While we were in the hospital with Eden last summer we began to truly understand the beauty of community prayer and experienced God's touch through His people.

One of those moments was when we received this large prayer scroll. This image will be sealed in my mind and heart until I can remember no more. Friends from our faith community had written encouragement and their prayers on this and sent it to us. We rolled it out in the outside play area on our floor. Then we walked up and down reading the notes, feeling God's presence in the prayers.

But Cadence...she ran up and down and jumped and danced on the orange scroll.

It may be taking this scripture out of confidence, but I felt like this was a "red carpet" to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16). I am grateful for our community who walked with us with confidence so that we were able to receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Weekly Prayer

Proper 22

Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready tohear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

from critical to creative

a friend of mine in our youth ministry recently brought a series of articles to my attention in a past issue of Relevant Magazine.

One of the articles was by Ed Young and centered on the Plank parable, where Jesus directs his followers to avoid having a spirit of criticism and judgementalism. Ed pointed out that the spirit of criticism often keeps a person from realizing the mercy that God has for herself let alone the mercy God wants to extend to others through her.

Another article contained thoughts from Mark Driscoll, the famous cussing pastor in Seattle. In his interview he pointed out that unless the 20's generation moves from being critical to creative, nothing will change.

i wonder what these thoughts have to say to the journey towards justice.