Hello, Friends!

On Sunday we reflected on the nature and value of prayer, that mysterious inward and outward reaching for God that we can’t quantify, but we nonetheless value as one of the most essential dimensions of our faith journey.

Everyone has his own way(s) of praying, her own ideas about how prayer works, and each of us can likely point to times in our lives when it seemed there were evidences of the Holy Spirit being at work, sometimes connected to a ministry of prayer.

While we have our ways of practicing prayer in solitude and in community, we really don’t “do” prayer. Rather, we allow prayer to be, to inhabit, infuse, expand our heart’s conscious contact with what matters, and with who matters.

Paul’s letter to the Romans, which I often reference as we begin our intercessory prayer time in worship, reminds us that “we don’t know how to pray as we ought…but the Holy Spirit, in sighs too deep for words, prays within us,” loving, nudging, awakening, challenging, always blessing.

As I said Sunday, sometimes praying can feel like a hard trek up a steep hill, or a slog through mud, or a conversation with ourselves in an echo chamber, or just some pretty words we mouth in each other’s company, without much engagement at all.
So how is the will of God going to work through our very human, imperfect practices?

Like our harnessing of wind and water to create energy, Scripture teaches us that holy love can also be engaged, cooperated with, and elementally channeled., so that as we allow Love to guide us, and to coalesce our individual energies into focused, loving intentions and actions, marvelous things happen.

So I have a request of you good people within “eyeshot” of these words, today—and you’ll hear me repeat this request, in weeks and months to come:
Please pray for St. Luke United Methodist Church, in whatever way comes naturally to you—with words of dream and desire attached, with visual images of how things might become, or simply with the name, held in attentive presence.

There are some powerful signs, I believe, that Spirit has begun a new thing here, and I think God wants and needs our creative, cooperative, heart-open engagement in the process of our faith community’s evolution.

Obviously the needs of our world are unfathomably daunting, and at times the challenges of our own life journeys can seem insurmountable.

Meanwhile, something (I call it Grace) has called us into communion and fellowship with one another—even if it’s just in reading the Epistle today.

With all my heart I believe prayer works, though the ways of Love remain a mystery. And I have seen this over and over again—when people come together in prayer, wonderful things happen.

I look forward to praying with you this Sunday, and all our days to come.

Shalom,

Sarah