“The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.” James 5:15-16

“It’s at the end of ourselves that new futures open up. Our plans fall apart. Our strength isn’t enough. Our cleverness fails us. Now what? That’s universal. You cry out like that and you’re joining a long line of souls from across the ages. I’d heard people ask questions about prayer. Does God hear our prayers? Does prayer work? What if you pray and you don’t get an answer? I never found those questions that interesting. It felt like they turned the great mystery into a vending machine. Say or do or believe or ask for the right thing and then you’ll get what you want. Or you won’t. That sort of thing. But that Now what? prayer, that prayer changed me. There was a world of confusion and longing and frustration trapped in my chest and that Now what? prayer dragged it all out in the open. It gave language to that black hole of despair. I was angry that the one thing that had ever really made me feel like I had something unique to contribute was being taken away from me and there was nothing I could do about it. That prayer gave all that rage and grief and loss words. Day after day in that hospital bed, wondering what I was going to do with my life. Repeating those two words (now what?).” (Bell, Rob. Everything is Spiritual . St. Martin’s Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

Now what? Have you ever said that to yourself? I have. I have reached points in my life where I felt as if there was no more path, no new direction, no new opportunities for myself. I remember lying at home after I had hurt my back playing soccer with some kids at the daycare where I was working as a gym teacher and thinking to myself “Now what?” I knew continuing to work with kids as a gym teacher was not something my body would allow me to do too much longer. So my pondering became a prayer to G-d, “Now what G-d?”

That is a good prayer to pray when our options seem to be limited, “Now what do you want me to do G-d?” That prayer for me turned my path back to following my calling to be a pastor. The church should always be praying the “Now What?” prayer when looking to improve or increase their ministries. If we do believe that prayer is powerful and effective, then all actions by the church and the people should begin with prayer. When we allow prayer to be our guide, then our ministries will also be powerful and effective.

Pastor Dave

“On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom ¹⁰ and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.”  John 2:1-10

“When I was a kid my parents took us to church. I found much of it rather uninspiring, but those Jesus stories, they did something to me. What struck me in those stories was how the biggest mysteries are found in the smallest things. A woman kneads some dough, a party needs more wine. A man buries a seed, rocks cry out. Something infinite happening in all that dirt and sweat and stuff of life. Blood and crowds and roads and friends—in those Jesus stories that’s where the life, the action, the divine is found. I assume I wouldn’t have articulated it like that as a kid, I probably would have simply said that I sensed there’s more going on here. That’s why I resonated with those Jesus stories. Because in them there’s always more going on here.” (Bell, Rob. Everything is Spiritual . St. Martin’s Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)

There IS always something more going on in the stories of Jesus – and in the stories of our lives. There is always more going on if we take the time to assess and seek something deeper. For example, when the woman anointed Jesus in Matthew 26:7-13 right before his last Passover, this could have been interpreted as a waste of expensive perfume. Jesus turned that idea on its head when he says “She has prepared me for my burial”. A moment of pure waste has been reinterpreted as an act of pure love. This is what Jesus tends to do in his actions with the sick, the outsider and the sinner. Those people whom society see as a “waste of space” have been given new life.

Who are the people our society has told are just a waste of space? Who are the outsiders, the sinners, the spiritually and physically sick who need our love, care and grace? Perhaps those people are the ones we should be seeking to share some of our time, our love, and resources. We are called to continue to turn the world upside down with the love of Jesus – or perhaps as Jesus would see it, turn the world right-side up.

Pastor Dave