prayer – Page 12 – 300 words a day

if i could sit with you.

If I could sit with you, I would tell you that sometimes we can hear God talking and sometimes we can’t. I would tell you that when we hear him talking, you don’t actually hear anything with your ears. I would tell you that you hear it anyway, that is probably isn’t an essay, it’s […]

by Paul Merrill

Prayer. Again.

(Paul Merrill writes here every First Friday) I constantly seem to forget how important and real prayer is. A few months back, I wrote about a friend who was facing foreclosure because he had not received a paycheck in over a year. I prayed with him for several months. God brought a job! Another friend […]

by Jon Swanson

Sometimes you just sit and listen.

My boss was very active. He handed me lots of things to work on, lots of projects to research. And I enjoyed it. It was stretching. It was fun. We were sitting in his office one afternoon, talking. I already had a long list of next steps in front of me. I was ready to […]

by Jon Swanson

You mean I haven’t talked about that before?

I really wasn’t planning to plunge into a series on prayer. Next week I’m teaching about prayer at a denominational conference. To help me think, I went to the group I teach on Sunday mornings and began exploring this question: What does it mean that so many people end prayers with some version of “In […]

by Jon Swanson

Two mountains, one inviting.

Consider two mountains. One is volcanic. Terrifyingly so. There is a little sign at the base: “touch and die.” Some people want to approach it for the adrenaline rush, the fear factor. A crowd gathers around that mountain. There is something compelling about complaining about the fear. There is something comforting about being banned. We […]