Reflection for Thursday, Feb 7, 2008

Romans 1:1-17
Paul is expressing how much the church in Rome means to him despite his never going to it. He is a pastor to people he rarely sees. This is how I often feel with the people in our church, especially the young people who have so much in their lives that make it impossible to come back and visit us. I understand this, but it doesn’t change the way I feel about them. I find myself begging parents or friends to tell me what is going on with the absent.

Paul writes, “without ceasing I remember you always in my prayers, asking by God’s will I may somehow at last succeed in coming to you. For I am longing to see you so that …we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.”

Some people might believe that a pastor gets encouraged directly by God or some unwavering faith, but I think most of us are encouraged by the journeys of the people around us, particularly the youth. When you let me into your lives, minds and hearts, I understand how truly amazing God is for making a person as unique as you with unique qualities and yet struggles we share. I waver on what it means to “pray without ceasing” but I become aware that I am doing it when I am going about my day and a thought of someone just appears.

Since having James and being constantly aware of his needs and schedule even when I am not with him, I realize how memory isn’t just what is on our brain at any given moment, but that the memory of the people whom we care about live in our bodies all the time. When I become conscious of people with a thought like, “hey I wonder if Emma is in a new play?” or “how Christopher, Anna and Eliza are getting on at their new schools?” or “what’s Jessica and Juan’s new house like?” it only reminds me that you have been with me the whole time, “without ceasing I remember you always in my prayers.”

Maybe prayer, like memory, is something that stays with us always, a place where we hold people and events that mean something to us forever. We are not always conscious of “praying” just as we don’t always know when it is we will pull something from our memory for “remembering” but whom and what we care about are always in these parts of us.

-- by Rev. Beth