July 2008
Lord, teach us to pray
I receive a lot of e-mails requesting prayers for various causes, organizations, and individuals. I have even received e-mails reminding me about the power of prayer! As I read through one of those e-mails this past week, I was reminded of the quotation by The Rev. David Collins, who wrote: “I’ve noticed that when I pray ‘coincidences’ seem to happen. There is power in prayer and we, the Church, need to heed St. Paul’s admonition to pray unceasingly.”Each week at all of our worship services, including Morning Prayer four days a week and Wednesday at the Healing Service, we pray “for the people.” We print in the Saturday night and the Sunday bulletins special prayer requests. I expect all of us to take those prayer requests home and to pray every day for those who have requested our prayers. They trust us and the power of prayer. We also include in our worship prayers for various government officials and others in positions of authority and for all military men and women and for every member of their families. We pray for those who are poor and for those who are in any kind of need. We Episcopalians do a lot of praying for others.
In the e-mail I received this past week it also reminded me that during World War II one of the advisors to Winton Churchill organized a group of people that would pause every night at a prescribed time and pray – no matter where they were or what they were doing – for England, its people, and for the miracle of peace.
There is a group of people in America who are asking us to pray for the same thing for our country every night at 8:00 p.m. Central Standard Time. They have asked us to pray for all our troops, for peace among our people and in the world, and for those called to stand for election this coming November. We need leaders who can be – as we pray in our worship services – men and women who “can make wise decisions for the welfare of all people”. I am also asking us to pray that all our hearts can be warmed and that we the people will vote and not just skip the upcoming election. As we approach July 4th, the signing of the Declaration of Independence lets us all remember the freedom to vote as envisioned by our founders as a cornerstone to the democracy we embrace. None of our founders every thought that 100% of those qualified to vote would want to do so. We are fortunate I’m told in the recent elections in Benton County to have had 19% of the registered voters at the polls for the election and 6% at the runoffs. We have a lot of praying to do and we need to do it unceasingly.
Let us pray,
Fr. Ken †
