Monument
I've always like the idea of a prayer journal, especially for keeping track of answered prayers. But I'm a terrible journaler, so it's never happened. I'm going to try to do it here.
First, to mark where I'm at, I have been a Christian since August 1997, and I'd conservatively estimate that I've had thousands of prayers answered.
This past week, God answered my cry very directly with Galatians 6:9 Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary. It spoke directly to my struggle, and God renewed my heart and strength.
About Me
Blinks
- Amazing Grace: faith and art
- Between Two Worlds
- Chrisendom
- Conviction of Things Not Seen (Spirituality made practical)
- Cost of Discipleship (An Orthodox twist)
- The Davy Tales
- Get Religion, religion in the press
- Katie Beaton's Comics
- The Lange Family
- Less than the Least(Evangelical law professors)
- Marks of Authentic Mission
- My writing
- Myopic Pilgrim (This AmeriChristian Life, hosted by Ira Jack)
- N State Travellers
- Of First Importance (Quotes on the Gospel)
- Opinions Nobody Asked For
- Smlwoman's Weblog
- Ugly Evangelical
- What Would People Think? (If They Knew I Was a Liberal Jesus Freak)
1 comment:
I've never kept a prayer journal as you describe, but because the Psalms has been my daily "prayer book" what has happened is that the memory of certain answered prayers has attached itself to various verses in different psalms. When I read (and pray) them year after year, the memories that come unlocked when I read these various verses keep the incidents alive in my active mind.
One example:
There's a psalm verse that refers to the capture of the ark by the Philistines and its recovery by the Israelites. "Look, we heard it was at Ephratha, we found it at Fields of the Forest [Kiriath Jearim]. Let us go where He is waiting and worship at His footstool." (Psalm 132)
Many years ago, when I was worshipping in a small Episcopal church, it so happened that a thief had broken into the church one night and carried off the priest's pectoral cross, and the silver chalice and other ceremonial objects that are used in the communion service, leaving nothing behind. This happened perhaps on a Sunday or Monday night. The word of this calamity was passed along to the members of our small, inner city congregation, and we all started praying for the return of these items so that we could have the service the following Sunday.
Well, as I prayed using the Psalms on the thirty day cycle, which means, I pray the psalms assigned for the day of the month, to which I also add my petitions, I started praying for the return of the stolen sacramentals. On the day of the month that Psalm 132 falls, I prayed this psalm and added my petitions to it, aware of the fact that the theme of this psalm is similar to our current circumstances. By that evening, I received a call telling us what happened that day.
A woman called the church and said she was walking in Kelly Point Park (a kind of forest preserve on the banks of the Willamette River), and she saw a cardboard box lying under a large tree against the base of the trunk. She went over to it in that lonely place, and found inside the box a number of silver objects, the paten, the chalice, and some other things. She was very surprised, but had a suspicion that there was some mischief involved, so she picked up the box and took it home, and was about to call the police when she noticed, upon closer examination, that one of the objects was engraved, "Dedicated to Saint Andrew's Parish, to the glory of God, in memory of…". So she went to the Portland telephone directory and looked for a church named Saint Andrew's. The first one that she came across was our parish. She called Fr McCulloch and asked if we were missing any sacred vessels. Of course, we were missing some, all of them in fact.
The woman told Fr McCulloch her story, and where she was living, and he went right over there and retrieved them. Only one item was not in the box—his pectoral cross (that's the one a priest wears around his neck during the services).
The woman found these items at approximately the same time in the morning that I was praying Psalm 132. That memory has never been erased, but continues fresh till today. That's one example from my "unwritten" prayer journal.
Post a Comment