Virginia Ruth 1/3/24 Virginia Ruth 1/3/24

A Prayer for the New Year

As we live into the new year of 2024, my prayer for you is this:

May you have peace in your heart. Peace regarding your health, finances, relationships, work and future.

May you have joy in your heart. Joy in each moment regardless of the circumstances.

May you experience hope in your heart. Hope that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

May you know Love- the Love that knows no end. The Love that loves you as you are. Today. This moment in whatever state you find yourself. And loves you too much for you to stay that way. The Love that is continually calling you to come home and belong to Him.

May you know and experience the peace, joy, hope and love of God. My prayer for you this 2024 is that during this year, this day, perhaps in this very moment, you experience God’s best for you. Amen.

Prayer

“Prince of Peace”, Harry Anderson, 1961.

When I was in nursing school one of the instructors gave us this advice: When you find yourself not knowing what to do next or unsure of what to say, wash your hands.

The thought was that you can collect your thoughts and plan the next steps while washing your hands. Even if you had already washed your hands, it is a good practice to wash hands when working with patients or clients.

I’ve been thinking about Ukraine and what I or any of us can do about it. It is so upsetting and unbelievable that at this day and age of 2022 we still have governments who think they can just trample over another sovereign country. (Ah, but therein lies the rub- there is no common recognition or definition among nations of who is sovereign.) But as we know, there is nothing new under the sun.

In this geopolitical scenario, we cannot solve this problem by washing our hands and certainly we cannot “wash our hands of the situation”. Even if one did not believe that we have any spiritual communality with and responsibility to one another (and by spiritual, I mean that we are all made in the image of God), we should be moved to do something by the sheer fact that these are fellow human beings- on both sides of the conflict: brothers, sons, fathers, mothers, daughters, sisters.

Lately, certain circumstances in my life have been totally out of my control. I find that I do not know what to do next and at times, unsure of what to say. But there is one thing I do know that I can do. I can pray.

I am thinking that the one thing that we all can do during this horrific situation with Ukraine is pray. Of course, the skeptics will say why bother- why would a loving God allow this bloodshed to occur in the first place? To that question- I do not know why. God’s ways are not my ways (thank God!) All I know is that when humankind does not get along, it is only through God’s grace that reconciliation can occur. That begins through prayer: prayer for the situation; prayer for the individuals involved; even prayer for the pray-er. Prayer changes situations but mostly prayer changes the individual who is praying. It helps refine the request, see things with a different perspective, keep the individuals for whom one is praying, foremost in one’s mind, and changes the heart of the person praying.

On Sunday, I read an article about the Ukrainian military inviting mothers of Russian soldiers to come to the border to pick up their captured sons. “You will be received and taken to Kyiv where your son will be returned to you,” the ministry statement says. “Unlike Putin’s fascists, we Ukrainians are not waging war against mothers and their captured children.” Sure, the skeptical part of me calls it propaganda but what a concept- recognizing that these soldiers are someone’s children.

I am wondering about the Russia mommas. Are they praying for their boys? Was this an answered prayer for them? Shouldn’t we be praying for all life to be spared?

Paul reminds us to pray without ceasing. That is a tall order for one person. I like the Orthodox concept of that: prayer without ceasing is knowing that we are collectively part of a praying community. When I cannot pray, someone else is. In a twenty-four hour period, prayers are being offered. Constantly.

I heard someone suggest- any time you hear a city named in the conflict, say a prayer for the people there. Pray for the world leaders. Pray for the Ukrainian leaders. Pray for the Ukrainian people. Pray for the Russian people. Pray for the Russian leaders. Pray that humankind will learn something from this conflict. And I pray that those on “the other side” are also praying.

I do not have enough knowledge nor imagination to know what to do next. But I trust in the ONE who does know. I trust that through our collective prayers, something will happen, for good and not for ill.

Loving Parent, How you must weep to see Your children not getting along. How it must break Your heart. Hear our prayers for safety and protection for the soldiers and all involved in the conflict. We pray for the Ukrainian people. Give them strength, courage and resolve-that they know that they are not alone in this endeavor. We pray for the Russian people- that they would have the courage to stand up to a bully government. We pray for the countries who are watching- that they know the right time and the right actions to step into the conflict. While we do not know why this is happening, we trust that You do and that You are working in this situation. Amen.

Prayer Challenge

Are you up for a challenge? One that is really not too taxing, yet most likely will benefit you.

Could you pray for a month? Any kind of prayer. Whether or not you believe in God, prayer in the very basic form, is thinking: thinking more deeply about our own situation or others. It is working through thoughts and circumstances whereas mediation is more of a clearing of the mind. Click here for a CNN article about prayer. Prayer causes us to reflect upon our actions and others. Prayer causes us to pause in our day.

My personal belief is that prayer is a conversation with the Living God of the Universe and I believe that He listens and cares about what each one of us has to say. While God knows all that is happening, He is a loving and interested parent. I know as a parent, I love to hear and talk with our boys. I want to hear about their days and what they are thinking. I want to hear about the joys, sorrows, successes and failures.

The beauty of prayer is that is does not require any special equipment, posture, or incantations. Just an open and willing heart. Author Anne Lamott says there are really only three prayers that are needed: Help, Thanks, Wow. Anyone who has had to take any school test knows how to pray- Help! Anyone who has held a healthy newborn has said in her heart- Thanks! And anyone who has witnessed a gorgeous sunset has said- Wow! There are the day to day, minute by minute breath prayers: Breathe in- ask God for whatever (peace, patience, calm); Breathe out- release to God whatever stressful (your worries, anxieties, poor attitude). There are prayers of the saints and sinners written down in the Psalms, in hymns, or liturgical worship books to guide our thoughts. Sometimes we pray our own specific random prayers and other times, the words of others convey our hearts.

Many years ago I designed a month of prayer- a specific topic each day- to pray. It was geared for a church, where each member was asked to pray for two other members (the person alphabetically before and after their name). One didn’t even really need to know the specifics about the person for whom they were praying. It was an exercise to lift them up in prayer using specific topics.

Attached is a prayer calendar of various topics for November. The thought is to pray in concentric circles: yourself, your family, your spheres of influence, your neighborhood, your country, the world. Each day of the month has a suggested topic but it is just that, a suggestion. The hope is that the suggestion might cause you to think about some other topic, need or specific person. The suggested topics are just the tip of the iceberg of ideas for if you can think it, you can pray it.

The thing that I notice most about prayer, while prayer makes a difference in relationships and circumstances, mostly it changes me: my attitude, or my view of a situation or person will shift and I can see things I was blind to before or were hardened in my heart. Hopefully while I personally may benefit from prayer, I am also contributing to someone else’s well being.

What about you? Have you ever prayed in a specific daily way? What was that like? Any changes in you or the situation?