Some of you know my husband Jeff and I choose a guiding word for each year. This year we chose the word “pray”! From my unexpected surgery in January to getting our churches online during the COVID lockdown to watching our country devolve into a quagmire of arguing over things as trivial as wearing masks—and the fact that it’s an election year, “pray “seems to have been a great choice. I can’t say any year is a bad year to choose “pray” as a guiding word, but you have to admit it was an excellent choice for 2020. In light of our “word of the year” I started 2020 revisiting a favorite devotional, Maxie Dunnam’s Workbook of Living Prayer. Praying with perseverance, boldness, and purpose are all challenges that are explored in the book. I believe it helped me to transform my prayers into ones that are not so “wimpy.” One suggestion both Dunnam and Rebekah Simon-Peter give is to prepare a list of who and what you want to pray for—because our spontaneous prayers are likely to be for what we’re thinking about at the time. Again, the most devoted athletes don’t make up their workouts as they go. They know workouts are most effective when they follow a well-crafted plan. I’m not saying we should stop praying for the concerns most deeply on our hearts—or that even devoted athletes shouldn’t take a spontaneous jog on a nice summer evening. It’s not an either/or choice. Can we pray for healing, comfort in grief, protection in travel AND for God’s creatures to be safe during storms, kids whose families don’t have reliable internet for online schooling, and an end to systematic racism? I pray that as individuals and a church, we will challenge ourselves to move beyond the prayers we normally offer to pray with perseverance, boldness, and purpose.
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Pastor CathyPastor Cathy has been appointed to Tyner UMC since July 2019; she also is a part-time writing instructor at Bethel University in Mishawaka. Archives
July 2022
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