Take it to God

I'm finding a lot in the book of Luke that I've never noticed before. One example:

Luke 18:1-7:

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary. "For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!' " And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?

And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?

And then compare that to another passage from Luke -- Luke 11:5-13 -- which describes a friend who comes to borrow three loaves of bread in the middle of the night.

The words I keep imagining here are persistence, continual, and relentless as they are associated with prayer.

Finding time for prayer is a big challenge for me. I'm managing to carve out some time in the mornings. I would like to avoid the "shopping list" types of prayers --"God, help this person and that person, do this, do that..." Honestly, though, that time in the morning has become a time to lift concerns, not much of a listening time at all.

There is a lady at our church whose job it is -- I think -- to assemble a prayer concerns list for each week. I never knew she did this, but for the past few weeks, she has been handing me a copy. It's 8½ x 11 and is filled with names -- concerns -- prayer requests from and for our congregation. Added to that are the many emails from our Emmaus community requesting prayer and the prayer sheet in the monthly Emmaus newsletter. All of these requests are worthy. All are valid and valued. I just can't see how I can send quality prayer to God for all of these concerns. It's overwhelming. And it doesn't even take into account those people and worries that I have myself that I would like to take to God.

I've tried to develop a habit of printing out the Emmaus newsletter list and putting it with my Bible. I pick ONE of these a day, and prayer about it. It seems to make it more manageable. I try to deal with the emails immediately. This seems to be too little to me, but I'm not sure how else to handle it. Now I have this weekly church sheet. I have no idea what to do with it. I have a feeling that she's giving it to me now because of the prayer vigil we did during Lent, but she doesn't understand that I thought that was such a great idea because of my poor prayer life, not because I was any good at it.

It's such a challenge to try to reconcile the need to take items to God in prayer against the feeling I have that God and I communicate much more clearly when I stop talking. How do we create this balance?

Images: I showed you the mama bird the other day; here are her two baby birds. Boy, is it hard to get decent photos of them.