Powerful Prayer

A few years ago, I learned the power of prayer through a very simple tool - a journal. Encouraged by our pastor to keep a journal and list our prayers, I started recording all the things I was praying for and making a note when the prayer had been answered. Sometimes the answer was what I had hoped for, and sometimes not, but I was stunned by the number of prayers answered over the course of a year, then two, then five. I saw - in my own handwriting - in black and white the power of prayer. I praise God for giving us the gift of prayer, for teaching us how to pray and for loving us enough to answer our prayers in a way that's best for us.

My Half Shekel

"The rich are not to give more than a half shekel and the poor are not to give less when you make the offering to the Lord to atone for your lives." (Exodus 30:15)
This scripture puzzled me at first - why wouldn't God want the rich to give more if they wanted to or could afford to? But then I realized - God was asking each Israelite to make an offering to atone for their lives. They were to begin, at age 20, to repay the Lord in a small way that recognized His gift of life. No one man is worth more than another to God - the rich and the poor are equal in His eyes. God did not want more from the rich because their lives weren't more valuable to Him than the lives of the poor. God loves us all the same!
"What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Mark 8:36)
Jesus reminds us that the gift of life is extravagant! Worth so much that nothing on earth can purchase his own soul - not the whole world! Yet God instructed the Jews to give 1/2 shekel each year at census time as a reminder of the Gift of God they had received. Surely, God's gift was worth far more than that - worth more than the whole world - yet the Lord sought a token as a reminder to us.
Do I know the value of God's gift to me? I know I haven't always acted in ways that show God how much I appreciate the gift. Every time I've done something self-destructive, I devalue the gift. My 1/2 shekel - is it just a daily acknowledgement of the Lord's gift through prayer? Is it doing his will, or doing something for others? How will I spend my 1/2 shekel today?

Corinthian Reflection
by Kim Deppe

Freedom reeks of slavery.
Sold into our own desires,
pushed into gluttony and hedonism
by our own commitment to self.
Lost in free will
wandering through forests of black thoughts,
bold desires, lust for more.
God gave me choices,
all of them.
I swing from chaste to haste, giddiness to fright,
serving to slavery.
Picking my way through paths littered with my faithless thoughts,
overcome by brambles of pain or sorrow,
thrashing through low branches hung with remorse.
The wooded way of my life
is peppered with regrets
and sprinkled with the dappled sunlight of Christ's love.
When I surrender my selfish freedom and seek the sun,
the Son finds me and wraps his wings of love around me.
Trapped in loving arms and not free - yet completely free to be
to be blessed, not cursed
to be loving, not lost
to seek and find.
"Everything is permissible," says the Lord, "but not everything is beneficial."
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1 COR 10:23,24
"Everything is permissible - but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible - but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others."