Becoming Known

A couple of weeks ago I bought a new book to see me through Lent. “Barefoot Prayers” by Steven Cherry contains meditations for every day. He says, “True prayer is the poetry of the Spirit.” Rather than follow the usual pattern of devotionals, the meditations are prayers that look and sound very much like poetry. The Psalms are like that – prayers expressed in poetic forms.

Today’s prayer begins…

Never take from us that vaguely anxious

curiosity we feel when we

behold a new face,

hear a new name,

when we give attention to someone unknown

(Steven Cherry, “Barefoot Prayers”, 2013, SPCK)

These people come with their storms and stories.

Last Sunday, the two of us, a lady I didn’t know very well, and myself, agreed to talk to one another. It had sprung from something I had said, a picture I had shared, that had echoed in her. We are both visual and picture-orientated. It wasn’t a vague idea about meeting for coffee some time, but actually making no firm commitment. We dug out mobile phones and diaries and decided that we would talk aver the phone on Friday night.

The “vaguely anxious curiosity” morphed into nothing vague and nothing curious, just the anxious bit of it. I don’t do easy conversations well. I worry that I will have nothing interesting to say, that there will be long awkward silences. I picture the person on the other end of the conversation following the clock hands around and wondering when it will be polite to put the phone down.

I’d tidied the front room. There was no way the woman could know the room was tidy. She couldn’t look down the cable and see things in their right places, and ironing pile neatly folded on the chair. I had the vague idea of battle grounds and the tidy room being like part of the armour worn.

Friday came. The evening came. The telephone rang.

I wasn’t coming as a cold caller. I’d done some homework – not the stalker kind. I hadn’t chased a Facebook profile down or hacked into her twitter account. I hadn’t whispered questions in the right ears. I’d made a point of praying and listening to what God might share. I printed off a poem I’d written that day as part of my poem-a-day Lent challenge I thought she might like to hear. I was equipped. That went some way towards easing my anxiety. You have no idea the hurdles I clamber over when it comes to being sociable – it’s not a natural thing for me at all. I spent over thirty years of my life in shy silence, and the next thirty years in, at times, a battle. I’m not a social being and yet God will not let me live in a hermit cave.

We talked easily for an hour or so, sharing biographies. It was the lightest of touches on the surface of who we were. There were no deep confessions of anything. We talked some of the story and some of the storm of our lives.

I have a very vibrant imagination. I’m not sure sometimes how much God participates in our conversations, or whether He just listens in as I supply His side of the conversation. Pictures and prophesies are murky ground for me because I can’t tell where I end, and where He begins. In my prayer tine, I had a picture, an imagination-kind-of-thing. I’d pictured a baby sitting on the knee of its mother. The mother held the baby in her arms, bent down and kissed the top of the baby’s head, perhaps inhaling a fragrance of milk and baby lotion. As she kissed the top of the baby’s head, it was as if the baby became translucent. I could see waves of something pouring into the baby from the kissed spot. I imagined what was poured in was love, waves of love. There was also a sense of safety, that the baby was in the most secure space in the universe. I thought too of the way kisses convey healing in the very young. My friend was the baby, God was the mother, and all the love and the safety and the healing were pouring in from His kiss on the top of her head.

We spent time in prayer, taking turns to speak and to respond. It was part of the conversation. She prayed for me in my struggles with my degree course, which I thought would be a stroll in the park but turn out to be more like climbing Everest.  I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew, but learning is not so easy as teaching. I prayed for her as she slowly recovers from illness. Earlier in the week someone had been talking about testimony. We don’t get the testimony without the test, she said. Difficult days are not always to be waved away with a magic wand. They must be lived through and learned through and the lessons shared with others. We never go through these alone but with others – with God first, and with our church family second. The trouble is that we become this lone soldier on the battlefield facing the foe. We forget that we are part of an army – a victorious one at that.

Friday conversations are part of my landscape now. Through them, we will both grow and change. It’s an exciting place to stand.

Wrestling in Prayer

The word “safe” is defined as “protected from or not exposed to danger or risk; not likely to be harmed or lost.”

The other day, while scrolling through Facebook, someone had posted a prayer. It was short, just a few lines, in a colourful box. Someone was praying for God to look after their friends and family and to keep them safe. I read the word “safe” and something in my spirit tugged. It wasn’t a good tugging. It was a sad tug. As much as anyone else I want my family and friends to be safe, if that is all I want for them, if that is all I pray for them, I am not making effective use of the power of prayer to transform them. “Not exposed to danger or risk” is not God’s plan for any of us. The kind of prayers we pray says so much about the faith we follow.

I read this yesterday:-

“Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.  I vouch for him that he is working hard for you and for those at Laodicea and Hierapolis.” Col 4:12-14

His prayer wasn’t about keeping anyone safe. Paul writes that “he is always wrestling in prayer for you.”

The word “wrestle” is defined as “take part in a fight, either as sport or in earnest, that involves grappling with one's opponent and trying to throw or force them to the ground.”

I grew up in a household where Saturday afternoon were spent watching wrestling in television. Men with muscles grunted and gripped one another in choke holds or swung their opponents into the ropes. It surprised me that no competitors exited the building carried out on stretchers to waiting ambulances. I dare say a lot of it was drama and show. It didn’t look comfortable. It makes me wonder how much of my own prayer life is all too comfortable and not rally doing much in the way of damage to my enemy.

Epaphras prayed that the believers in the Colossian church would “stand firm in the will of God, mature and fully assured.” It was in the early days of the Christian faith. Admitting faith in Jesus often carries a death sentence. It wasn’t an easy ask that people stand firm in the will of God. Jesus talked of seeds sown in a field where some seeds did not have deep roots. When the sun came up, the trials, their faith withered.

I read this morning of Paul and Silas in jail. Midnight came and they were singing. It doesn’t say that before midnight they were weeping and wailing and then got their act together. They were singing and an earthquake happened. Walls crumbled, chains fell off. They were exposed to danger, to risk and to harm – they were not safe. And yet in some sense, they were. God is sovereign. What He permits, He permits. Some of the saints get rescued. Some don’t. Everyone who commits themselves to Jesus and His kingdom is ultimately safe, if not in this life, then certainly in the next.

If we play safe we never get to see the whole span of the goodness of God. Faith doesn’t get a chance to grow because we stifle it. We re-write God’s promises and never ask for a mountain to move and so it stays in our path casting its shadow and halting our forward journey.

Paul was able to vouch for Epaphras, that he was “working hard”. Prayer that works hard grapples with the opponent and tries to throw or force them to the ground. And who is the opponent? Whatever stands between me and all that God has promised.

Maybe the problem when it comes to praying risky prayers is that we are not convinced that prayer works. Or maybe the problem that we know that prayer works and it frightens us.

God’s best story involves struggle and

There’s a twist that comes at the end

Victory spits in the face of defeat

God knows the inside of a tomb and

It cannot contain Him

He knows the taste of death but

It cannot sting

Praying the Pauses

Yesterday had all the potential to be a great but it didn’t turn out that way.

I like things like Lent – that preparation time of the heart before Easter.  I’m not so bothered about fasting, or giving up chocolate for forty days. Yes, it’s a challenge but with my built in brownie-point mentality it becomes something far too external and physical rather than something inner and spiritual. This year I bought a book “The Little Book of Lent: Daily Reflections from the World’s Greatest Spiritual Teachers” edited by Cannon Arthur Howells. The one contributor who I have recognised so far is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It’s like sitting with the sages and drinking in their wisdom.

Back to yesterday. I like my quiet times in the morning. I am not more alert then than at other times of the day, but I know the day ahead has challenges and I know that the best way to deal with them is to be armed with everything that God puts out on the table. I admit that many of those things are not picked up. They are left on the table and perhaps later on, after some event happens that I could have dealt with better, I rush back into the room to pick it up rather aware that the horse has left the stable and it’s too late to close the door. Yesterday I didn’t make time for my morning quiet time. I didn’t pick up the Lent book. The day would have been so different if I had,

Another contributor I didn’t know was James Catford, Group Chief Executive of the Bible Society among other things. Yesterday, he wrote about William Wilberforce and his intention to “make goodness fashionable” and about how he wanted to begin with his own heart, transforming his thinking, not just his action. James called it “making virtue possible”.

He went on to talk about spiritual disciplines and prayer. Prayer can be slotted into so many small pauses throughout the day. Waiting for the kettle to boil can be a minute or two spent in prayer. Walking up the stairs rather than taking the lift, or even standing in the lift if the walk is too demanding, can be times of prayer. He called them short prayer walks.

Like anything else, this way of praying, catching those pauses during the day, doesn’t come naturally. We don’t drag our attention away from other stuff always to focus on God. That’s why James called to discipline I suppose – because you learn to do it and make it a habit. Three months, apparently, it takes to make a habit. I am almost three months into a Scottish Slimmers diet. Can I presume that healthy eating will become a habit?

Yesterday my day was littered with prayer pauses – or, rather, the potential for prayer pauses. Because I didn’t read the book, it never occurred to me to live my day any differently to any other day. I should be praying my pauses anyway – but sometimes we need to be taught to do these things and I wasn’t taught. The day wasn’t a disaster – don’t get me wrong.  It wasn’t a bad day as days go.  I have had bad days and I know what they are like. Yesterday was not bad but it could have been so much better.

I could have picked up the book later on in the evening but I was reading something else, some fantasy fiction adventure involving dragons. There was a nudging inside from the Spirit – “Read the Lent book! Read the Lent book” and my answer “Just the next chapter! Just the next chapter, please.” So I read the fantasy fiction adventure and not the Lent book.

I took the Lent book to bed with me. I read the chapter and I mourned for my lost day.

Today is a new day and I am praying my pauses – but yesterday is lost to me. All the distractions of the day, the usual and the unusual, robbed me of the opportunity to live a different kind of day.

I am challenging myself, and not quite succeeding, to write a Lent poem a day. This is yesterday’s poem (written today).

My foe proposes

To snatch every moment and

Fill with diversion

Wake up, dear heart, rise

Take back each and every pause

Therein look for God

The Holy One

I have really got to stop buying books.  There’s nowhere to put them.  Open a random cupboard door and books fall out.  

This particular book is “Calling God Names: Seven Names of God That Reveal His Character” by Norman Hubbard.

Just about every prayer of mine begins “Oh God,” or “Oh Father” or “Oh Lord”.  They don’t quite have the disaster quality one might associate with the two-word starters.  I am conscious there is a beauty in addressing God that I am missing out on. I don’t want to use flowery titles to make my prayers sound great, but I want to use His titles to direct and empower the words I pray.

The first chapter addresses God as The Holy One. The study begins with Exodus 19 when the Israelite nation arrive at Mount Sinai ready to receive the law.  God is not portrayed as their buddy or their pal.  The mountain is off limits. God obscures himself in fire and cloud.  The nation trembles at the idea of God drawing near.  Nothing about God was to be taken carelessly or casually. They were not able to bear the completeness of God ad so He reveals himself bit by bit, adding to what they know, building a reservoir of knowledge and experience.  His intention is that their relationship with Him is always growing. 

I shared a poem I had written with the Breathe Writers this morning.

Mount Sinai

I am not sure

I want to be

This close to Him

Who choses me

He wraps himself

In fire and flame

This Holy One

I cannot tame

In silent awe

In stillness stand

He shares with me

His purpose planned

“This Holy One/I cannot tame” speaks to me of engaging with God on His terms, not mine.  He is not a presence in my life to do my bidding, which is not to say He ignores my requests.  I cannot bring God down to my level, although He chooses to stoop down.  God then, as God now, lays down the terms of His relationship with me.

“He shares with me/His purpose planned” speaks to me of the conversation God wants to enter into with me. He is not looking for a “yes” man who is just wanting to be told what to do. He invites me to ask questions, to make suggestions and to voice my protests if necessary. Neither of us, Him or me, are required to be the silent partner in the firm. There’s probably so much more He wants to tell me about, but He doesn’t always have my attention.

Something I wrote in my journal – Exodus 19:4 “I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.” God doesn’t push me away, or pull Himself away from me when I fail to live the way He has set out for me. Rather, He enters into my life more fully to teach me His ways.

The Suffocating Weight of Blankets

“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7 (NIV)

There is a dream I remember from childhood.  I remember it because it was a recurring dream - the same dream night after night. There were two dreams, although the second one probably wasn’t a dream as such because I was awake at the time, or I had fallen into that place between being awake and being asleep, not quite one, not quite the other.

I’ll tell you about the second one first because it’s not really relevant to the rest of the story but it’s interesting.

It was in the days before duvet covers.  Blankets and sheets ruled the bed.  I liked to have my sheets and blankets very tightly tucked in – very tightly.  It was impossible to tuck them in tightly once I was actually in bed so I was very careful to slither in from the top and move as little as possible once I was in. I always slept with an arm outside the bed regardless of how cold the room was.  Not only was it in the days before duvet covers, but it was in the days before central heating.  There was a coal fire in the living room downstairs, but upstairs there could be ice on the inside of the windows.  Still the arm would be outside the bed.

I was convinced that the blankets were moving upwards.  Without the arm to stop them, I was sure that the blankets would move up the bed, cover my face and suffocate me.  

I hated to go to the toilet during the night because I was convinced that if I left the bed, the blankets would move upwards and tuck themselves in at the top and I wouldn’t be able to get back in.  I was always amazed that the blankets hadn’t moved an inch while I had been away.

The other dream, the recurring one, also involved blankets. 

The dream would start with me lying on the bed.  I was always cold because I didn’t have a blanket.  Someone would pass by the bed and spread a blanket across me.  It was just the one blanket, not a thick one, so I wasn’t that much warmer.  Minutes would go by and another person would pass by the bed and spread another blanket over me.  I was a little warmer, but it was a cold night.  When the third blanket arrived I was beginning to feel warm and cosy. Then there was another blanket followed by another and another. More and more blankets kept coming.  I could feel the weight of them pinning me down onto the bed.  I couldn’t move.  They were so heavy that I was struggling to breathe.  I began to panic and often woke up screaming.

I don’t have that dream anymore – but sometimes the reality that I live in feels a lot like it.

Not blankets this time, but the cares of the world pile upon me.  There’s a burden that’s given by God – the yoke that is light.  There's also the burden that we give ourselves – the not-so-light one. All it takes sometimes is an article or two in the newspaper, or some careless remark tossed out to the world by a politician or a picture of a three year old boy dead on a beach.  The “blankets” tossed over my spirit become heavy, one after another.  I am weighed down and struggling to breathe. 

Long before I get to the waking-up-screaming-stage I seek out God. I may not be able to take off the heavy load by myself, but in His presence I off load all my cares.  I tell him about the stories in the news.

I tell Him about people who are accused of petty crimes, who no longer qualify for Legal Aid, who have to defend themselves and can’t, who plead guilty to something they never did on the off chance that a guilty verdict means they only have to pay hundreds of pounds of courts costs rather than the thousands of pounds. 

I tell Him about the people who can’t work who get pushed through an assessment that insists they can to snatch back a paltry benefit and how the person they said could work when they really couldn’t…really couldn’t and dies.

I tell him about the boy on the beach.

Of course, He already knows these things but as we talk one “blanket” after another is lifted. The world and all of its bad news ceases to paralyse me.

I ask God to act and the government sometimes does its U-turns.

Morning Rendezvous

Early I wake and slip out through the door

Morning? Not yet, but the stillness before

Birdsong? Not quite, just a whisper, no more

A rendezvous planned on a high mountain peak

Time set apart, my Father to seek

Before the day’s work I hear His voice speak

I open my hands and receive for that day

All things abundant for giving away

The love of the Father in me on display

To heal the leper, give sight to the blind

To speak to the injured, words that are kind

My time with my Father each day I must find

Just Being God's Friend

It’s Day 4 of my 40 days with Bonhoeffer and I am finding him to be a challenging man.  He comes from a very different generation of Christians from me.  He’s not a man for trivial nonsense.  He would be unlikely join me on my lifestyle evangelism course “Keep Your Fun On” that kicks off next week. 

Yesterday’s study was all about morning prayer.  

He was very determined that it had to be morning and not just some time later on in the day. Regardless of whether you are a morning person or a night person, he would say it makes no difference.  Finding the time that suits you best is pandering to the flesh and surrendering to what is convenient rather than what is right.

My first response was “Not possible!” The time between getting up and leaving for work is already a busy time – preparing packed lunches, eating breakfast, watching the news and settling to a snatch of a quiet time.  Getting up early would be an option if I was sleeping better.  One of my nieces has a new born baby and comments on how well or how badly he sleeps at night.  I sleep the required amount of hours and I dip into the dream part of the sleep, but it’s fragmented at best, waking up throughout the night. If I slept solidly through the night I could get up earlier.

I think part of the problem lies in confusion between what I call a quiet time and what he calls morning prayer.  My quiet time makes use of Bible study notes and a pen and a journal and time to muse before I write something.  His prayer is just prayer.  My prayers tend to be rooted in the Word that I have read. I am not so good at praying off-the-cuff.

Morning prayer is necessary, says my friend Bonhoeffer, to set the day right.  Prayer at the end of the day has something of the “after-the-horse-has-bolted-shutting-the-stable-door.  It’s a mopping up, picking up the pieces, damage control kind of prayer.  Much better to order the day before it begins and take the initiative.  We make our declarations about the day ahead to set our minds and hearts to glorify God. Intention is woven into the fabric of the day.  We are better equipped to deal with the challenges that come our way with a prepared mind-set.

I am challenged to look at my whole quiet time structure and the straitjacket time that I have made it.  I am looking to be more flexible.  I am stuck in a success criteria list based on how much I read or what I record in a journal.  So, yes, flexibility sounds good. 

I can’t help but wonder what Bonhoeffer might have made of last night’s half night of prayer hosted by Blue Flame last night.  I suspect he might have asked why it was a half night rather than a whole night.

I discovered last night that although the girl in me left the Brethren Church many years ago, there is still a lot of the Brethren Church that hasn’t left the girl. Many of my friends have explored a whole spectrum of ways of connecting with God.  I don’t know enough about what is happening in the spiritual realms when people dance with flags and ribbons.  I am a woman of words. The spoken word and the written word stir me.  I know the damage I can do with well-chosen words – or the healing I can bring about.  I am quite traditional and conservative.  There are a lot of things I haven’t tried and maybe it’s my next step to be a little more adventurous in my approach to prayer.

I forgot to put my hearing aids in before I left home which didn’t help.  I titled my head and caught a word or two, but because I hadn’t clearly heard what they prayed for I wasn’t comfortable about jumping in with a loud “Amen”.  I felt I couldn’t take up the baton and run my part of the race. 

I think God had a very different agenda.  He knows what I am like.  He knows that a half night of prayer will appeal to me – to get me to a place.  Ask me to pray, or to preach, or to lead worship and I am up for the challenge.  I love to “do”. To ask me to just sit, and to listen, and “not do” is the bigger challenge.  So I sat, and I listened and I did not “do” and I cried.  I felt God very tenderly help me to take off the armour that I seem to always be wearing.  We talked about the battles we had fought side by side throughout the week.  We laughed at the ridiculous moments and the humour of the week.  We had a silent minute or two to acknowledge the times when the enemy seemed to prevail. It was as if we weren’t in the room at all, but were two battle scarred soldiers propped up against a bar in a pub toasting each other with almost empty beer glasses.

I am God’s servant but at that moment I really had a sense of just being God’s friend.

Contineo – the Sequel

I resisted the temptation to dive into a new set of Bible notes until the New Year began.  There is a sense in which I think God almost sighs, even yawns perhaps, when I dig these things out. I have a ticky-box gene along with all the other interesting genes.  I am not saying that quiet times are a bad thing because they are not but sometimes they can become part of a routine – something you do because you have always done it and there may be this vague idea of a bad day ahead if you don’t.  When it ceases to be life or stir your innards and becomes words just tossed about in your head maybe it’s time to do something else instead.

The opening studies are all about Nahum.  I wonder if, in heaven, there are many people that go up to Nahum and say, “I really loved your book, by the way.” Perhaps he is one of the book writers of the Bible who heaven dwellers avoid because they know they never read his book. I am reading it.

It’s about Ninevah.  When I think of Ninevah I think of Jonah and the Whale. Jonah warned the inhabitants of Ninevah about God’s coming judgement upon them.  They repented, seriously so, the king coming down from his throne and tearing his clothes, and the punishment was averted.  Jonah sat sulking for a while under a vine.  Jonah spoke his warning one hundred and fifty years before Nahum began prophesying.  You’d think that having come so close to being obliterated by God the people would have been a lot more careful about how they treated God and God’s people.  A slow slide away from honouring God over the next one hundred and fifty years led to them being told that the end was coming.  One hundred and fifty years of forgetting how close they came to destruction. There was going to be no mass repentance this time and no king climbing down from his throne.  This time there would be nothing left of them. Nahum was no Jonah. This time there would be no escape.

The name Nahum means comfort and consolation.  Nahum was not there to comfort or console the inhabitants of Ninevah.  His words of comfort and consolation were for God’s people who had been mistreated for years.

“The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him.” Nahum 1:7

How much more comfort do you need? It must be hard to hold on to such words when life all around you seems to be saying that God isn’t good, that he can’t help you and he doesn’t care what happens to you.  Life says it.  Nahum said otherwise.  We need, sometimes, to stop listening to life and pay attention to Nahum.

There is another verse that I really connected with:-

“Now I will break their yoke from your neck and tear your shackles away.” Nahum 1:13

What an incredibly strong picture that presents!  The yoke broken spoke to me about release, complete and lasting. The yoke is broken so that it can’t be used again. The shackles are torn away.  They are not placed in a storage box to be taken out at a later date and put back on. God comes across as angry that His people have been enslaved.  Throughout the Old Testament God uses other nations to punish Israel for their idolatry, but when the nations he uses takes the opportunity given them to have victory over Israel and take it too far, becoming too cruel, God gets angry.

What particularly came to mind was a yoke of sickness and shackles of illness.  Many of my friends are involved in Healing on the Streets.  I saw them in my mind breaking yokes and tearing off shackles.

I shared all this in our meeting this morning.  One of my friends had been off work for quite a while struggling to overcome a virus. He needed to be back at work. A move to a lighter task in the workplace was a possibility but not guaranteed. My friend wanted his health back.

Contineo – my Latin word, “to hold together, to keep together, to connect or to join.” I had connected with a word spoken by God to Nahum. I had connected to a word about breaking yokes and tearing off shackles.  I had connected that in my mind to victory breaking a yoke of sickness.  The circuit was almost complete.  

Praying scripture is amazing.  It’s God’s word on the issue, not mine.  It’s God’s power on display, not mine.  I prayed for friend, speaking out the words of Nahum into the situation.

Yes, perhaps God sighed again.  There were no yawns this time.  The connection between His word and his healing touch had been made. 

Contineo

The adventure continues

The Last Straw and the Camel’s Back

I am looking at straw.  Not the real stuff, the yellow, prickly stuff that cows eat and guinea pigs sleep in, but the metaphorical stuff.  I look not upon a pile of it but just one single strand.  Yes, I am faced with the piece of straw that breaks the camel’s back. 

So what do I do? Surrender to it and comfort myself that I held it together for a good long time? Mop up my tears with a bath towel?

I confess a pity party appealed.  I entertained the notion for a while.  I thought about robbing the Peter resources in me to pay the Paul problems I was encountering only to discover I’d already done that weeks ago. Peter was empty and Paul was demanding to be paid.

So what did I do?

I’d written a poem earlier on in the day – before Paul appeared.  If the truth in the poem was genuine truth and not just pretty words that rhymed, there was only one response.

I let Jesus see my struggle.  I let Him know my pain.  I listened with my heart and my spirit…and I heard His victory song in my ear.

God is no use to me if I keep Him locked up in words in the book – even if that book is the world’s best seller.  Faith opens the book and releases the words inside.  Faith invites me to take God at His word and grab hold of His promises.

Paul makes his threats.  Peter cannot help.  But God?  He has given me everything I need for life and godliness – in abundance.

The last straw that would seek break the camel’s back – I pick it up and toss it harmlessly away.

Incarnation

The Ageless and Eternal One

Beyond all time and space

He folds away divinity

To mortal flesh embrace

He comes to keep a promise

An ugly curse to break

He steps into our darkness, calls

This sleeping world to wake

He sees us in our struggles

And knows us in our pain

And sings o’er us a victory song

A powerful refrain

The sin that binds and bites and burns

He comes to wash away

And opens wide a brighter path

A new and living way

Dice Prayer

In finding new and creative ways to engage in prayer I found “Dice Prayer” on the web.  The numbers 1-6 are assigned topics and then roll the dice.  Whatever number comes up is the topic you pray about. There is no specific list attached and you simply pray what’s on your heart.  A friend and I played Dice Prayer for an hour or so today.

Roll a 1 - Thanks For…

There are always lots of things to be thankful for.  Earlier this week I had spent a couple of hours one evening with a couple of poet friends.  We have been meeting together once a week or a fortnight to share our poems.  It is not just a performance – reading the poems and getting a pat on the back, but trying to give honest critique.  One of my friends confessed that even though she writes down the comments we say, she is very reluctant to change anything she has written.  The poems themselves reveal so much about the writer and even though it may not be their personal experience they write about, something of them leaks in. With many of the poems being about the Christian faith we sometimes end up gently preaching to one another which is so good too.

Roll a 2 - Personal Petition

Work situations can be quite stressful at times.  I have been doing my job for over thirty years now – in different towns and cities and even countries.  I have been thinking about either some kind of wind down scheme or taking early retirement.  I am feeling a little like an elastic band stretched to its capacity.  Sometimes I think I am close to snapping.  Other times I manage to unstretch through prayer, worship or knitting.  I am just a little bit cowardly when it comes to making life changes. We all have a tendency to hold on the familiar reluctant to dismantle the tent and move on.

 Roll a 3 - Family and Friends

It seems all too easy to dismiss the existence of God when the world looks to be in a mess.  How can there be a God when there is so much suffering in the world?  When the suffering is not at arm’s length, in someone else’s life or in a country the other side of the world it becomes a more urgent issue.  God doesn’t seem to step in when a family member is diagnosed with cancer.  Maybe people of faith find some consolation in God giving comfort, or the knowledge of a next life that is so much better than this one – but that doesn’t mean God is real.  For some people the debate about whether God is real or not is just an interesting conversation.  Other people really need to know.  When I needed to know, God put people into my life to drop seeds and nudge me closer to Him.

Roll a 4 - The Church and Outreach Projects

Our church is a small church.  We meet in people’s homes.  It’s a not church for hiding behind anyone.  We are not listed anywhere.  Trying to explain to other people what we are about can be difficult.  There is not huge worship band and not long sermons.  We share life in all sorts of ways.  We have created a very safe environment and very close friendships.  We have a number of fingers in a number of pies that cross church walls like Healing on the Streets (taking prayer out into the community), Prayer Spaces (Taking prayer opportunities into local schools) and Street Pastors (being available late at night in the town centre serving the night time community).  We are being equipped and encouraged to get involved with evangelism – trying not to make it a scary word.

  

Roll a 5 - The Community

This particular number didn’t come up in our game.  I know that many people are struggling with bills.  The newspapers talk about growth in industry and the end of austerity measures – but we are not seeing any light at the end of our various tunnels.  People on welfare have been hit particularly hard.  The balance between helping the work-shy back into work and protecting the vulnerable is always going to be a difficult thing.  Too often compassion is being taken out of the equation.

Roll a 6 - Governments and the Wider World

We had both been waiting for the six.  We had been following the stories of people caught up with the Muslim extremists in the Middle East. IS (Islamic State) seem to be marching through Iraq almost unstoppable.  The world seemed to look on in silence just waiting to see how bad things might get before they step in to help.  I know enough about Islam, something of the example of Muhammed and the teaching of the Qur’an to know that this is Islam at its warped worst.  Doesn’t almost every Surah in the Qsu’ran begin with the words “Allah, the Compassionate and the Merciful”?  There is nothing compassionate or merciful about the IS response to other faiths. If ever a group of people needed to recover their humanity – these people do.  Christians seem to shine brightest in the darkness of persecution.  Let not their testimonies go unheard.