prayer – 300 words a day

Peace for a Thursday.

On Thursdays we don’t need big challenging thoughts. We need quiet reminders. We need to remember what we believed on Sunday, what we promised on Monday, what we lost track of on Tuesday. We need to sit for a moment, just a moment, and shake off the chaos that was Wednesday and rest. We can’t […]

by Jon Swanson

Journaling prayer, David style.

The other year, Meg wondered about journaling prayer. I think it’s a great question. I think that sometimes, David prayed with a pen. The book of Psalms includes some of those prayers. They reflect honesty and vulnerability. They aren’t pretty or polite. But neither is good conversation. 1. With a loud frustrated voice. I cry aloud […]

by Paul Merrill

Two ways to pray

Prayer is like breathing – if you follow Jesus, you have to pray. One way that prayer is not like breathing is that we won’t die right away if we stop. But if we don’t pray, it will be the start of a long slow death. Picture a marriage where two people live in the […]

by Paul Merrill

Turn frustration into prayer

Politics are so polarized today that almost any discussion can turn into a fight when participants have different viewpoints. It’s very easy to get frustrated by world events and the reactions – or non-reactions – of our leaders. And it’s truly hard to bite our tongues when confronted with approaches to problems that are different […]

by Jon Swanson

to teach people to pray

Eugene Peterson is was a mentor of mine, though we have never met face-to-face or time-to-time. Peterson wrote about lots of things and wrote The Message, a modern language version of the Bible. He died in 2018. He once sent me a letter that made a difference in the words that you read here. Years ago, […]