I remember when Ernest and I were falling in love.   He was in Virginia, in a call on the Eastern Shore and I was in a call just north of Pittsburgh, in the small town of Callery.  Every day, two to three times a day, we spoke on the telephone; sometimes just to hear each other's voices.  We dreamed of the day we could talk face to face, be in each other's presence.  We were in love.  That is the way with people who love one another isn't it?  They want to communicate- to know one another.  In our relationship with God these talks are called prayer.

        I wonder if many of us view prayer this way, as a conversation with the one who has chosen us and whom we love most?  When we do, prayer moves from a duty to something we desire to do, almost more than anything.  Andrew Murray writes, "Faith in a prayer-hearing God will make a prayer-loving Christian."  We learn to trust that God is our surest love, dearest support, most reliable confidant and place of rest.  Jesus shows us what a deepening prayer life looked like.  In the case of "most reliable confidant," our chapter in the BELIEVE series, includes Jesus' time of prayer before he chose the twelve disciples.  Under the topic of "safe rest" Jesus models prayer for us when, after many of his miracles, he went to be with the Father in prayer.  For times of deep trouble, Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane is a powerful example of faith and comfort in the hardest times.

        Many of you may be smiling as you read this, for you have experienced this in your life already.  Yet, for some of you, what I have just written seems out of reach or just a mystery.  Perhaps you, like the disciples,  feel that you are just too busy to take the time or you have prayed but not felt God's presence.  What difference does it make anyway?  Plenty!  For "Satan trembles when he sees the weakest Christian on his knees."¹  Even the greatest skeptic wonders, how many of the very things I work for so dearly in my life are out of my reach because I can't seem to go to the very one who has the power, loves me most and would go to the greatest lengths to help me?  Martin Luther clearly puts his finger on the problem, "To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing."

        So BREATH!  Talk to your dearest beloved.  Where to start?  Read the Psalms.  They will teach you to pray.  Follow the outline of our prayer each Sunday in worship; adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication (asking for your needs.)  BREATH- PRAY-LIVE!  Blessings, Rev. Ellen

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