INTERCESSION – LISTS FROM OTHERS

          I mentioned in an earlier blog that I include in my daily lists the prayer request lists that friends send to me for their ministries.  One of these lists contains the prayer requests that I receive from The Salvation Army’s Social Justice Commission.  This international commission was set up in New York about four years ago.  It has significant links with different operations of the United Nations.  The goal is to help The Salvation Army become more aware of the role that it can play in social justice in the world.  At the same time, it is a means whereby The Salvation Army can offer in an official manner its gifts to others for the purpose of social justice activities.  The first person that was responsible for the operation of this Commission was Commissioner Christine MacMillan and she was my friend and former boss.  I offered to help her set up her prayer support team when she began in this function, but she has since been able to develop a helpful and informative prayer newsletter that she sends out monthly or bi-monthly and I am fortunate to be one of the recipients of this letter.  It keeps alive my own passion for social justice, as I pray daily for the concerns that she brings to our attention.            

         Since Glen and I served for nearly thirty years as officers of The Salvation Army, we receive regular communications from the person at our National Office who sends out information to those who are no longer in active service.  Sometimes, one of the “retirees” will send her a prayer request and she will circulate it to the rest of us.  One of my daily acute requests is one of these.  It came from friends of ours and concerns her niece and husband, who both have serious health issues and are the parents of two little boys.  Our friend has spent some time with the family to help them out, during a month when both parents had to undergo surgery.  I am going to e-mail my friend in the next couple of days to ask her for an update on the situation for this family, so I can continue to pray intelligently for them.

          Another of the lists that comes to me by e-mail from the national office of The Salvation Army is the list of prayer requests that are prepared each month for the Canada and Bermuda Territory of The Salvation Army.  This Salvation Army global region governs our area.  At one time in my career with The Salvation Army, I was responsible for the preparation and distribution of this list, so I have some idea of what is involved in that.  The requests are now listed by week, rather than by day, so I am able to remember one of them each day in my prayer time.  Also, this month, the person who is currently responsible for preparing and distributing the list sent us a link with the National House of Prayer in Ottawa.  Going to the place on their website, she suggested, I found a list of prayer requests from the Christian Legal Fellowship of Canada.  They feel the outcomes of certain cases will shape the future of our country in significant ways, so request prayer for these particular cases. These I have added to my list.

            Since I know that there are people from many parts of the world who are reading this blog, but I have not had many responses to the blog, I am going to offer an incentive. I am going to put the names of all those who respond to the blog, in a hat and once a month, I will pick a name and send that person a copy of my book, More Questions than Answers, Sharing Faith by Listening. In this way, we will be able to make the blog more interactive. 

I will look for your comments. 

Coming Home

We settled into our retirement home after nearly thirty years of wandering the globe. Condominium living frees us from shoveling snow or weeding gardens. As, in summer, we gaze out our windows at manicured lawn and flower gardens, and the waves dancing on the bay across the street, we are living our dream. In winter, we see the walks and parking lot all shoveled and salted, without any effort on our part.

Coming home to a place where we spent many happy years enables us to nurture friendships we valued as young adults. Over the years we fell into and out of each other’s lives, moving from one place to another, always exchanging greetings at Christmas and getting together whenever our paths crossed in the same city. In spite of geographical separations, our hearts remained attuned to one another. Now we can call and meet for coffee, on a whim or decide at dinnertime to take in a movie together the same evening. What a treat!

Along with the joy of long standing friendships comes profound healing of broken relationships. Occasional visits provided insufficient opportunities to get together with a couple alienated from us, through misunderstanding. We could not invite them over for coffee or a meal to try to begin to build the trust that unfortunate circumstances eroded. Now we are home and free to invite them into our hearts again. We have the time to make amends for whatever split us apart on that day long ago.

“How will I feel leaving my children behind, to return to the place we all called home,” I wondered. Yet where they are in their own journeys, they cannot come home just now. Even that somehow seems right. They need the space to create their own lives and make their own homes, so when they come to ours, they need not assume a role that no longer fits them. When we left and busyness prevented them lingering for lengthy farewells, we knew they had taken wings and were living their own adult independent lives. That was what we raised them to do.

Coming home is a comforting concept in my imagination. We return to the place where dreams began, where hope was palpable and where love was the atmosphere that nourished us.

In the intervening years many early dreams shattered, subsequently replaced by dreams we would never have anticipated. Over time, hope has been buffeted and almost extinguished, yet it bravely continues to face each new dawn. Love has matured from a secure refuge to a giddy feeling finally metamorphosing into a deep commitment that holds steady when we find everything else brought into question.

Coming home is much more that physically relocating Coming home is finding again the place where my heart and my mind are attuned with who I am and where I am. With the Apostle Paul, I can say, “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation….” (Philippians 4: 12 NIV) When I know Whose I am, I am home, wherever I am.