Personal Prayer Power Blog

>кухниst returned from an overnight trip with my sister Susan to the North Carolina mountains. It was our Christmas gift to each other so for two short days we could get away from the stress, cares and worries of our lives. As we drove up we talked about illness and financial distress and missing Mom and Dad. Mom died 8 years ago. Dad died 4 years ago. Then I turned off on the wrong interstate exit and we found ourselves at the gateway to The Cove, a retreat center founded by Billy and Ruth Graham.
We hadn’t planned on visiting there, but got a visitor’s pass and went to the visitor’s center in the chapel. It was a cold December Monday and we were the only visitors. Nevertheless, the cheerful volunteer tour guide showed us around and we marveled at the gorgeous winter sun being admitted to the chapel through the leafless trees on the mountainside. It seemed to set the beautiful polished heart pine floors into glorious flame and the whole chapel seemed to glow.
Our guide took us up front and told us how they’d acquired the grand piano. Then she asked, “Do either of you play the piano?”
Susan said wistfully, “I used to play. I haven’t played in a long time, so I wouldn’t be very good.”
We exchanged an uneasy glance, both remembering how the piano Susan had inherited from our girlhood home had burned up in her house fire four years earlier. I remembered seeing the metal piano strings in the ashes. That was all that had been left of the piano. Susan hadn’t been able to replace it. And I remembered how we’d gather around that old piano and Dad would get out his ancient violin from his high school days and we’d sing Christmas carols together. Dad’s violin had burned up in the fire, too.
The guide went on, “There’s plenty of music in the piano bench. And here’s a hymnal.”
I found myself saying, “Susan, play something for us.”
She sat down in front of the grand piano in the empty chapel and thumbed to the hymnal to “Silent Night.” I sank down into a seat on a front pew as the beautiful strains of “Silent Night” rose from the open sounding board and echoed off the polished floor. Susan swayed gracefully as she played and I felt tears well up in my eyes. It was one of God’s perfect moments.
The vibrations of the piano strings ceased and Susan got up from the piano bench and the guide said how beautiful that had been. The beautiful piano in the empty sanctuary had come to life under Susan’s touch. And we had come to life because of its music.

Karen Barber
To see pictures visit www.ourprayer.org/blog/user/karenbarber

Our table was completely empty this Thanksgiving. We had planned on a family dinner here in our dining room for 8 – Gordon and myself, our three sons, our daughter-in-law, our new baby granddaughter and a friend. We cancelled Thanksgiving dinner at 10 AM on Thanksgiving Day, right when I had been expecting to put the turkey in the oven.

At 3 AM on Thanksgiving morning our 19 year old son John, just in from college, developed abdominal pain so bad that Gordon took him to the emergency room. He was admitted to the hospital. It turns out he has a place in his small intestines that’s inflamed and infected. Don’t know why. It just happened. So they put him on IVs and started pumping him with antibiotics and talked about doing surgery. That’s when I called off Thanksgiving dinner.

John was opposed to surgery because the doctor estimated a 2 week recovery time. The next two weeks are full of projects and exams that will cap off his whole semester of studies. We prayed and reassured him. And the doctor took a “wait and see” approach to the surgery, giving him 24 hours to see if things improved.

Gordon and I ate Thanksgiving dinner at a McDonald’s in the hospital. I had a salad and Gordon had a double cheese burger. Back in the hospital room, John had a few ice chips.

Strangely enough, even with cheeseburgers and fast food salads and ice chips, Thanksgiving still happened. We were grateful that John was home and not off at college when he got sick. We couldn’t help but be grateful for the emergency room doctor who was alert enough to see that John really needed help. For the medicines that can fight infections. For the medical staff who spent Thanksgiving working. Even for that awful stuff you swallow so they can see what’s going in your stomach.

As I rode down the hospital elevator to go home, two men in rough laborer’s clothes rode down with me. I smiled and said, “Happy Thanksgiving. And they responded with a hearty “Happy Thanksgiving” back. And I knew that Thanksgiving can happen anywhere.
Even in a hospital elevator amongst strangers.

See Picture to my blog at

http://www.ourprayer.org/Singlepost/user/KarenBarber/?p_BlogId=6416370

Here’s a picture of my morning prayer walk shoes. Do you think it might be time to retire them?

I’m not fussy about the stains on them, but I know it’s time for new prayer shoes when the material on top starts tearing up. When that happens and I walk down the grassy bank to the pond for a moment of meditation, my feet get soaking wet from the dew, or the left-over rain water or from the sprinkler water on the grass. I end up with wet toes.

Someone a few years back coined the phrase “bad hair day” but I believe that a bad shoe day is ten times worse than a bad hair day. That’s because bad hair is only cosmetic. Bad shoes can leave you limping and blistered and plain worn out and unable to get anything done.

One of the worst shoe days I ever had was on a mission trip to Honduras. I had worn a former set of prayer shoes in equally deplorable condition because of the muck and mire of the rural Honduras village where the nearest paved road was 50 miles away and where cattle and horses and chickens wander free. Why wear new shoes that might get ruined? Unfortunately, my old prayer shoes decided to literally give up their soles in the middle of a work project. The sole completely ripped off of the tops of the shoes. Luckily, the guys on the team had duct tape. I wrapped duct tape around the nose of my shoes and the soles and limped along for the rest of the week. It proved very amusing to the villagers.

Lately I’ve been learning how important it is to not be caught off guard with fear and distractions when you’re trying to get things done in a new ministry. I’ve been consciously praying Ephesians 6:13-18 where it tells us to put on the whole armor of God so we’ll be able to stand our ground. It tells us to have our feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. That’s great advice! Shoes should be something you should be able to forget you have on. They should be well fitted. Simply having them on makes you ready for action. And good shoes bring peace of mind when you’re out walking around in muck.

Have you put on a good pair of prayer shoes today?

In my last blog I told how I have been praying my vision every morning on my daily prayer walk since February 29, 2000. The other morning I was driving off to help take care of my new grandbaby and (of course) happened to have my camera in the car. As I got to the stop sign where I’ve prayed that prayer for so long, the sun was rising and the ground was still wet from rain. I pulled my car over and got out to try and capture the beauty of the scene. Here’s what I saw.

These October days when I’m praying my vision, this stretch of the sidewalk looks very different from this photo. At 7 AM when I reach this spot it’s still quite dark and the last few stars are slowly fading away in the graying sky. I’ve walked this stretch of sidewalk in all seasons, in darkness and sunlight and rain and fog.

There’s something incredibly comforting about giving your prayers their own special spot to thrive and grow and become real along a pathway you often follow. Someday, maybe after I’ve added another ten years to my vision prayer I’ll stand here and say with awe and amazement, “This is where it all began.”

First Prayer Igniters Board Meeting

On my previous blog I wrote about time machines and going back into the past. This week I traveled the opposite direction and journeyed into the strange and mysterious frontier of the future.

My vehicle was a long and involved IRS form for tax exempt status that I needed to fill out for our new nonprofit, Prayer Igniters. Our ministry had its very first board meeting in September. As of yet we have no bank account and no programs running. It should be a cinch to fill out a form for a group that doesn’t have any past and very little in the present to report, right? Wrong. According to the form, we have a future to report!

The form poses oodles of questions like this “Do you or will you undertake fundraising?” If ‘Yes,’ check all the fundraising programs you do or will conduct.” Then they say, “Attach a description of each fundraising activity.” Hmm. And thus the form had me constantly embarking on mental journeys into what we will be doing in 2010 and 2011.

Actually, the IRS didn’t invent traveling into the future. Prayer did. The reason I happened to be filling out a nonprofit application in October of 2009 was because on February 29, 2000 I asked God to give me a mission statement. He gave me these words “The Way of Prayer for Many.” I wasn’t sure what way of prayer I knew that would help anyone else. But I began to pray the vision every day on my prayer walk. I can’t say that much happened for several years, but I kept on praying.

I eventually started speaking on prayer and keeping a log of prayer answers in my journal. Then my elderly father got sick in 2004 and died a year later. It seemed like a huge detour way off my prayer vision route. Only later did I see that Dad’s illness gave me priceless personal experience on how to pray during a crisis and how to pray when things don’t get better.

In 2006 I took a huge step and did a video study series on prayer. All of this time, the nonprofit idea was still completely off my radar screen. It didn’t go “blip” until one spring day in 2008 when I was having lunch with a woman from a huge church. She told me she wished that she could get more people interested in prayer. Bingo! I was meeting my first Prayer Igniter – someone who wanted to light a match to spark interest in prayer but who needed a little help, inspiration and support along the way.

So prayer makes it possible for me to report to the IRS what the future will look like in 2010 and 2011.

This brings us to an interesting question. What will you be doing in the future? In 2010? In 2011? I think I can help you fill in the blanks if you can answer this question. What are you praying as God’s future vision for your life today?