"These people are nuts. They pray all the time. It's a little weird isn't it?"
Ah, yes, just the sort of thing you'd expect folks who are trying to follow Jesus to say, right?
The pace of prayer in our new lives is a little remarkable. In any given week, in the Sending Center (the WHM "home office"), we pray for 30 minutes every day, Monday-Friday. Except on Tuesday, where we pray for 2 hours. In addition, whenever a missionary is passing through, we stop to pray for them. And we pray during team meetings and group projects. We read prayer requests daily from the field and pray for them too. And usually twice a year, and then again at board meetings and leadership retreats, we take a whole day to pray. Practically anytime we are together, someone says, "Well, let's pray" and before I can locate the nearest exit, I've got people gathering around and laying hands on folks and hugging and praying. It's just odd, I tell you.
Not only that, but now that Parker is getting older, we make a point of praying with him a few times a day as well. I find myself regularly talking to God non-stop on the way to and from work as I think about the spiritual battles that will face me that day. And, get this (!), a few of Jennifer's friends have invited her to come hang out in the evenings every few weeks so that they can pray together. And not just hang out for 2 hours and pray for 10 minutes. Long praying. On your knees praying. Crying out to God in desperation praying. Coming home late when you have to get up early the next day praying.
Even on the weekends there is no respite. Many of the women from the office get together once a month on a Saturday AM and pray for the urgent things on the field. This last Saturday after Jennifer got back I asked about a co-worker's back problem. Jennifer didn't know anything about it--they were too busy praying for the kingdom to advance and the issue of personal health never came up. (Clearly this is not the group you want praying for you if you are going in for surgery... unless, of course, you are are in a hospital in Kenya. Then they may get around to you.)
The thing that was so striking to us though, is how normal we'd thought our prayer lives were before we came to World Harvest. I mean, we prayed plenty before we came to Philadelphia. I was on staff at a church; we prayed a lot. Jennifer is an olympic class journal keeper and petitioner. I've been know to take as much as 15 minutes at a time to sit and pray in the middle of the day. We were no slouches in the "Well Let's Ask God's Blessing On This" category.
It's been unsettling to us to see just how little we actually did pray. Well, at least it seems "little" by comparison to what we do now.
So what has changed? Well... I don't really know. Honestly. Other than the fact that we seem to be with folks who are constantly praying, so we get sucked into things.
What I can tell you is that our ability to see our own need for prayer has dramatically increased. Maybe it's just that everything has seemed out of whack for a while, or that we've been through a lot of transition. Or maybe it really is true--missionaries really are more spiritual than most people! But I suspect that it's something deeper than this.
I suspect that deep down in both of our hearts we've tapped into a sense of desperation and longing for a God that is bigger, more beautiful and loving, and infinitely more dangerous than we'd ever really thought he was. And when you get a taste for this, coupled with a clearer picture of your own needs, it starts changing things in your prayer life. And, come to think of it, we're probably a little nuts now too.
Ok. I've got to stop and go find someone to pray with. Or at least get a hug. (I told you that things were strange out here!! ;-)
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