photo credit: Hugo Infante / Gov. Of Chile / Reuters

…just how cool this ride would be after 69 days under the earth? 

Awesome.

I’d like to say I wouldn’t lose hope after that long, but I would probably be lying. 

Pray for the miners and their families, as the next several months (and possibly the rest of their lives) will take some getting used to.  Pray that God would protect their hearts and minds and give wisdom and humility to them all. 

And while you’re at it, pray for me.  I’ll pray for you as well.  Feel free to comment and let me know how I can pray for you today.  I’d be honored to do it.

How can I pray for you?

Tonight is the most personal song on the record for me.

April used to struggle with pretty intense anxiety and panic attacks.  I wasn’t really aware that this was something she had struggled with most of her life until we were married a few years.  The panic attacks and anxiety seemed to get worse when we first moved to Arizona.  I thought at first it was just due to her not being used to her surroundings.  But, things kept getting more and more intense, causing her to shut down emotionally.

I didn’t work at Remuda at the time, so I wasn’t as therapeutically aware of anxiety disorders as I am now.  So, when she would get in a bad place, I would simply tell her to just try not being anxious.  Knowing what I know now, that statement was flat-out ridiculous.  Turns out she just needed me to let her know I was there, as these panic attacks would usually happen in the middle of the night.  So I did that.  But after she went back to sleep I was wide awake and worried.  I wrote the song over a period of a couple of weeks.

April was feeling really down about the anxiety, as she was praying that God would take it away from her.  When he didn’t, she took that as a sign that she didn’t have enough faith and was trying too hard to fix things herself (she was on WebMD 24/7).  She believed that all things were possible through Jesus, but at the same time was a bit unsure.  It reminded me of the story in the gospel of Mark where a man told Jesus, “I believe.  Help my unbelief.”

Tonight ended up being a desperate prayer for God to show up in an obvious, tangible way and ultimately ending in obedience, regardless of an outcome.

Verse 3:

To You o Lord I call
My feet have slipped
and I’ve begun to fall
but instead of faith I’ve tried
so would You open up the skies tonight

Heavenly Father, if I should suffer need, and go unclothed, and be in poverty, make my heart prize Your love, know it, be constrained by it, though I be denied all blessings. It is Your mercy to afflict and try me with wants, for by these trials I see my sins, and desire severance from them. Let me willingly accept misery, sorrows, temptations, if I can thereby feel sin as the greatest evil, and be delivered from it with gratitude to You, acknowledging this as the highest testimony of Your love.

When Your Son, Jesus, came into my soul instead of sin He became more dear to me than sin had formerly been; His kindly rule replaced sin’s tyranny. Teach me to believe that if ever I would have any sin subdued I must not only labour to overcome it, but must invite Christ to abide in the place of it, and He must become to me more than vile lust had been; that His sweetness, power, life may be there. Thus I must seek a grace from Him contrary to sin, but must not claim it apart from Himself.

When I am afraid of evils to come, comfort me by showing me that in myself I am a dying, condemned wretch, but in Christ I am reconciled and live; that in myself I find insufficiency and no rest, but in Christ there is satisfaction and peace; that in myself I am feeble and unable to do good, but in Christ I have ability to do all things. Though now I have His graces in part, I shall shortly have them perfectly in that state where you will show yourself fully reconciled, and alone sufficient, efficient, loving me completely, with sin abolished. O Lord, hasten that day.

Taken from A Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions, edited by Arthur Bennett.

You know, I think about community a lot.

A lot, I tell you.

And I’ve been thinking about it lately – how I long for more of it, how I’m thankful for the certain amount of real community that I do have and how excited I am about new potential as well.

We live in a world full of quick connections, friends categorized in lists and followers of 140 characters (or less).  We are able to connect with more people at one time than ever in history, and in a lot of ways that’s a good thing.  But one thing has never changed:

Real friends are harder to come by than you think.

Real community is, too.  These sort of relationships are risky and sacrificial, which is not a way of life our culture typically recommends.  That needs to change.  Jesus changed it, and there was no greater love ever shown.

Henri Nouwen says it this way:

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing… not healing, not curing… that is a friend who cares.

Do you have people like this in your life?

More importantly, are you this person in someone else’s life?