But on a more serious note...

...what I really intended to blog, until I found the duck thing and just had to throw it in...

a prayer I came across that I pray today for us. First, this quote:
"Prayer is simple, prayer is supernatural, and to anyone not related to our Lord Jesus Christ, is apt to look stupid." Oswald Chamber in Daily Thoughts for Disciples.

I've watched the evolution of prayer in you, my love. What an amazing thing it has been. When you blogged sometime ago a prayer for me, and noted there that it was not something you did very often, I knew how deep was your sense of the inefficacy of it, the unknowable logic of how it could work. Things like: If both sports teams pray to win, which group does He justifiably give the win to? Or, if a tornado passes over one praying town and its people say God saved them, does that mean He condemned the praying town a few miles over, the one that it hit? These were the things that were a wall that--while it may still be there--is no longer a barrier to you. You've found some sort of gate that your rational mind did not previously see, haven't you? So here is a prayer I came across today...it raises two things that have figured into my blogs and our talk lately...both intimacy and "spilling" things. More importantly, it raises a request that Scripture become the powerful connection between God and us that it is intended to be, a request that the connection between the leading of the Spirit and the "interpretation" as found in the "living word" be apparent. This is a thing that we need right now, as you continue to dream things that need definition.

A Prayer of Intimacy

Help me, O God,
To treasure all the words in the Scriptures,
but to treasure them only as they lead to You.
May the words be stepping-stones in finding You,
and if I am lost at all in the search,
may it not be down a theological rabbit trail,
or in some briar patch of religious controversy.
If I am to get lost at all,
let it be in Your arms.
Help me to love You the way Mary did.
And may something of the spilling passion of her devotion, spill onto me.