It’s all Matt’s fault. Several years ago he and his wife Shirley parked in our draconian downtown to run errands. They had a parking ticket when they returned and Matt had to appear before a judge. The judge gave Matt a choice: pay a fine or volunteer to “work off” the crime. Since Matt is retired and already volunteers at a bunch of places, he chose the volunteer hours and the place: the Redwood Empire Food Bank.
Matt thoroughly enjoyed himself volunteering, er, paying his debt to society at the food bank, especially since he already had a tiny ministry providing food and coffee to day laborers waiting at the side of the road north of town. The enormous supplies of the food bank, however, opened his eyes to greater possibilities: a food basket giveaway at our church.
He found some ready accomplices in Greg and Craig and before the St. Mark crowd really knew what had hit them, we were giving away 75 bags of groceries every other week.
Recently, while praying for ways to expand our ministry to our community, several folks, including my husband, took another look at that food basket program. They noticed children standing in the cold with their parents every other Saturday. They knew we had gifted Sunday School teachers. Why not? Kids Korner began–yesterday–and 20+ children sang “The Hokey Pokey,” danced The Macarena, heard a Bible story, got snacks and worked a craft–all in the half hour it took their parents to stand in line and get their bags of food.
What has that got to do with prayer for me?
Kids Korner debuted on HOP Saturday. You know, Helping Other People Saturday, a day organized for our congregation to fan out into our community and serve others. I told them I didn’t care what volunteer job they assigned me–send me wherever needed.
Sadly, gladly, they needed me most at prayer, so I got the morning shift: 2.5 hours.
I don’t think I’ve ever prayed that long before. One hour, easy. But 150 minutes? Hmmm.
I was by myself the first two hours, so I began with myself figuring if my own heart wasn’t right before God how would I be able to pray effectively for others?
My own heart took longer to straighten out than I expected . . .
But then I got to pray about the activities, the ministries, the people of our congregation. Midway through, I remembered a friend stationed in Baghdad and got up to leave his name with the “making cards for people in the military,” ministry. I could hear the children in the nursery, but the rest of the church was silent–everyone had gone out, most to a local park, to serve. It was exciting.
By now I was in the rhythm of prayer and the last hour went smoothly. I had a list of the participants and prayed down that. I had today’s bulletin and prayed through the activities of our church. I even prayed through all the prayer requests in the Jews for Jesus newsletter.
Everyone returned for lunch at noon and we heard about the hard physical labor my brothers and sisters in Christ had put in. New assignments were handed out for the afternoon and my 92-year-old pal Jo and I were tasked to visit the local Pregnancy Counseling Center–where we prayed for the ministry.
It was a terrific, encouraging day, and all because several years ago Matt did not put enough coins in the parking machine. Don’t you love it when God uses the seemingly-inconsequential, to do great things?
I had never heard about Matt’s traffic ticket! And David and I have been involved in 2xBlessed for quite a while! Thanks for sharing.