A Letter

So I started going to church regularly about a year ago… About the same time I lost my job, funny how that all works. Anyway, I really like the church I go to, it is very casual and they don’t hover all over you when you walk in the door. The pastor wears jeans and Hawaiian shirts and his sermons are a combination of stand-up comedy and listening to a good friend, so the time flies and I get a lot out of it.

This summer our eight year-old son decided he wanted to play football (he wanted to play last year too, but I told him no and that he would have to wait until he was eight)… He remembered—can’t remember anything else but he remembered this. Unfortunately most of his games were on Sundays so we missed church. We received a card from our pastor saying he missed us and hopes to see us soon—‘nice’ I thought.

Football had just ended and our son’s basketball beginnings and wouldn’t you know it, a lot of Sunday games! Anyway I get a letter in the mail and it is from our church, addressed to me and it looks long and inside there is four post-it notes with the same women’s names on it, including mine—five names in total. The letter starts off with…Life is busy and how we need to make time. I go no further.

In my head I go to a very bad place. As much as I like my church I am very upset that they would just “assume” that I would want to join a women’s Bible study or women’s group. I start to get really mad. Do they not realize my daily drive to work? Do they not realize that I have a family to take care of? And forget about the weekends if I am not doing a 101 choirs, juggling shopping, walking the dog or going to my kids’ sporting events I’m trying to have fun—even if it kills me! Oh I was fuming. That’s it, I told myself, don’t even read the letter, tear it up and throw it away.

A couple days later I picked up the letter right where I had left it. Okay just read what they have to say, call them and let them know you are not available. End of story. So as I read the letter it says, “…life is so busy and we were hoping you could make the time to pray for the women listed on the post-it note, we gave you duplicates for your busy lives…”

There were other things on the letter, but overall they just wanted folks to pray for each other. I was shocked, tears filled my eyes and I felt so ashamed and guilty for being so self-centered. Pray for someone and they are going to pray for me too? So daily I pray for women I don’t know and it feels great and the thought that they are saying a prayer for me is simply amazing and such a blessing… Amen.