Prayer power

A railroad track skirts one edge of the nature trail park where we like to walk. Sometimes, a train rumbles past, and my husband starts counting aloud the number of cars behind the engines. The more cars behind, the greater the engine power needed up front.

My first thought was of the energy I need for the busy days when I have lots on my to-do list, including the privilege of caring for a busy, curious toddler grandson. As a friend of mine likes to say, “I’m not complaining, just explaining.” I also thought about the prayer burdens so many of us carry. Historians tell us that the great Protestant reformer Martin Luther practiced long prayer before each day.  He reportedly said, “If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day.” 

Two hours! I'm no "Luther." But I do find time drags when I get bogged down praying for people with difficult issues. Yet, when I simply sit and praise God for who He is and thank Him for what He has done and is going to do, time passes without my thinking of it. The power of praise and adoration was also a favorite topic of Nazi concentration camp survivor and inspirational writer/speaker Corrie ten Boom. She wrote, “Be sure you remain covered with a canopy of praise.  It is like a tent over and around you. Satan has no entrance as long as you pin down the sides by praying, and thank God for His wonderful promises.”(1)

Admonitions to praise God go way, way back.  In her book Karen! Karen!, author/speaker Karen Mains quoted from a translation of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, giving instructions for those living in the long-ago hermetic desert community: 
As long as I live, it shall be a rule engraved on my tongue to bring praise like fruit for an offering and my lips as a sacrificial gift.
As the scroll continues, it instructs adherents to recite the Ten Commandments morning and evening, and bless God's name continually as the day progresses, not just before meals. From life's daily rhythms, the writer moved to harder things:
When fear and terror come, and there is only anguish and distress, I will still bless and thank Him for His wondrous deeds, and meditate upon His power, and lean upon His mercies all day long. For I know that in His hand is justice for all that live, and all His works are true. So when trouble comes, or salvation,  I praise Him just the same.(2)

To borrow the train analogy, if I have enough “engines” of praise up front, it’s easier to pull the loads (“problems”) behind. Praise also reminds me that it's not all about "me pulling the load," but turning these concerns and "impossibilities" over to God. He's the Engineer and the source of Power,  not me!

(1)Corrie ten Boom, Her Story (New York: Inspiration Press, 1995), p. 446.
(2) Karen Mains, Karen! Karen! (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1979), pp. 148-49.

Getting off the Xmas Xpress

The hobby building of our local county fair featured this huge set-up belonging to a miniature railroad enthusiast.  As I listened to him tell visitors how his train-land grew, I recalled the simple set my son set up in his bedroom for several years at Christmas. He had a tiny room, ten feet square, and hauled half of a Ping Pong table in there to hold the train. He had to crawl under it to get to bed!

Lately, I’ve been thinking how the Christmas season is a lot like that miniature train. Once a train is set in place, and the tracks are perfectly aligned, it will go round and round until someone hits the “off” button. So it is with “traditions.”  Yes, we had some “traditions” when our children were young.  On Christmas eve they opened the package that contained their new home-sewn pajamas. On Christmas morning, their first package was a box of usually-forbidden sugary breakfast cereal. (Yes, I tried to be their health-conscious mom.)

But as I consider what has become “Christmas tradition,” I wonder if we have courage to call it the “Xmas Xpress”: the intensive retail and party season that propels us into winter with barely a nod to the huge spiritual significance of God coming to earth as a baby.  Have we made too much of gifting each other, and not gifting back in gratitude to God? I can think of several “gifts” that honor the Lord’s birth lots better than the way many are doing it now:

*The gift of kindness and service.  I hope we’ll never forget the simple gifts of showing the Lord’s love.  Like visiting a shut-in. Taking a meal to someone who’s lonely, ill or bereaved. Offering to clean, repair or do yard work for someone who can’t.  One young couple we know, living on a tight college-student budget, decided to do “Twelve Days of Giving” for their Christmas family gift.  They decided on twelve number-related “giving tasks,” and took photos of each for a small album they gave parents.  For example, for Day 10, the wife had ten inches of hair cut off for a non-profit that makes wigs for medically-bald children.  For Day 4, they offered “four hands” of serving in a local food bank.  Day 8 was picking up litter on eight blocks near their home.

*The gift of appreciation.  Has someone’s kindness made your life easier?  Tell them in a heart-felt note. Has someone’s close walk with Christ inspired you or helped you?  Tell them. This year, while adding notes to Christmas letters (yes, I still do that, but to a limited number), I took extra time to write some former, aging pastors and their spouses.

 

*The gifts of alms. It’s not just the red kettle bell-ringers. Our mailboxes are flooded with solicitations at Christmas because it is, after all, a time when we acknowledge God’s amazing way of intercepting history with the birth of His Son. He was born into poverty—not the way we might have chosen things for history. He ministered to the poor. In our family, we decide on at least one “Jesus gift” to support a ministry that has burdened our hearts.   We’ve encouraged family members to do the same in lieu of “gifting” us. It brings me joy to know that instead of more “stuff” for me, that money is instead  buying food for a child in Africa, chickens for a family in Central America, or electricity for a ministry to the homeless.

*The gift of deference. Not everyone in my circle of influence agrees with cutting back so drastically. To them, Christmas isn’t Christmas without gifts. They’d be disappointed without several packages to open.  I accept where they are, and try to gift wisely.

*The gifts of reconciliation.  My heart aches for families where there is enmity.  Often it’s because of a divorce or separation or some other family difficulty.  I pray for two families divided after a stepparent's death. I imagine Jesus weeping over this, even more than I do. What a gift it would be for either family unit to write or phone and say, “Let’s turn away from the past.  Please forgive me for my part in our conflict. Let’s make a fresh start before the Lord.” Such bold, humble steps are like the image of reconciliation in Psalm 133--of family harmony like precious anointing oil spilling over a priest’s head.  Surely, this is what pleases God.

The scriptures say of Jesus’ coming, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift” (2 Cor. 9:15). As Christians, we know the secular celebration has gotten out of hand. But in simple ways like this, maybe we can show the world that it’s still about how very, very much God loves us—so much that He sent a Savior.