Good News!!

I exchanged several emails yesterday with the person that inspired me--through her own efforts at journaling through a web log--to start the Salt Mill. Her honesty in dealing with the past year of life and the many difficulties and struggles that she journaled in her blog helped me gain a sense of perspective about our family's recent struggles. I have a link to her site in the right column of the main page. Her name is Wendy.

If I remember correctly--I asked my mom about this a few days ago--my mom introduced me to Wendy in the late spring of 1980. My mom doesn't remember her and Wendy didn't remember me when I contacted her at the beginning of summer. I did that because she left an impression on me when she told me--I think a year later--about a decision she made that I viewed as being spiritually bold and courageous.

She has come to mind now and then during the past two decades, but the opportunity to reconnect with her didn't "happen" (the word happen has the root "hap" which is Middle English for "chance" or "luck".) Now, I don't know about you, but I try to be careful about ascribing to mere "chance" what God very well may have planned out on purpose. So I trust that God had a reason for why things turned out that way.

Then--all of the sudden--through a "fortuitous" series of events I "happened" upon it. (I'm playing with my readers with all of the double quotes and allusions to fortune and chance.) The events were this: Jen and the kids were going on vacation. I didn't want to be bored. It was the 30th anniversary of my entry into high school. I was struggling with connectedness with other people. So I started contacting some of my old friends. I had a thought on how to get in contact with Wendy that--THIS TIME--worked out.

Now let me set the scene for you from my perspective: some random guy sends you an email claiming to know you and presents one deeply personal fact about a decision you made back then and asks how that decision turned out. What do you do?

Well, to make a long story short, Wendy responded graciously and then pointed me to her blog to "let me catch up." I took advantage of that offer and not only "caught up" but also followed links from her blogs to meet some of her friends through their blogs as well. All of this went a long way to helping me heal a lot from some of the very tough times I went through in the past few years.

I had asked Wendy to permit me to pray for her on needs in her life. I distilled some of the needs that I saw from her blog and emailed that list to her (along with some prayer requests of our family) approximately one month ago.

The exchange of emails yesterday was a discussion about how God has answered those prayer needs of mine and of hers. It gave me goose bumps when I saw not only how many needs were directly answered but as I thought through the evidence of the WAY God answered those prayers.

While the "Good News!!" in this post is sharing with you a renewed friendship that has brought me both healing and joy, I want to teach through it as well. It takes very simple actions to connect to people and to reach out and share their burdens. In most cases the simple action of asking for a few prayer needs and praying for those a FEW TIMES within a month will bring down a waterfall of God's blessings on the other person and--dare I say it??--on you.

God blesses us as we seek to connect with both fellow believers and with unbelievers. We spread the Kingdom of Heaven through those actions much more effectively than the crusaders tried to do so in the Middle East in the Middle Ages. Don't try to make serving God hard. Go for simple gestures of extravagant love. Merely praying (MERELY...I'm smiling at that!!) can change the world and certainly can change one other person's life in mighty ways.

When you're feeling down or disconnected... When you're feeling alone or "apart"... If you you're hurting from dealing with really tough circumstances...pick up a phone or write a letter or send an email or IM someone and ask them how they are doing and if there is a need of theirs you can pray for. You can trust that most people will reciprocate and do the same for you. If enough people start doing that, it weaves a web between us of mighty prayer.

And I wonder what God can accomplish if we surround each other with prayer?

Isn't that Good News?? Won't you try it today?

P.S. By the way...thanks, Wendy, for not ignoring that email from that guy you couldn't remember. You and your friends have been a tremendous encouragement to me as I've healed from difficult times...and I suspect you didn't even know you were helping me...you just thought I was supporting you!! That's the Way of the Kingdom of Heaven!