Only a prayer away...

This week has been made me stop and think about the fragility of life and how often I have heard about how life is tough but it also reminds me to reflect that yesterday was a lesson, today is the present (like a gift) and tomorrow brings hope from the life lessons that we've been gifted with.

One of the things that I think have been overlooked by many commentators over the years as our nation, indeed world, becomes more and more secular is the power of prayer, an often untapped supernatural power source that can change a situation when we start to tap in.

I think of some miracles that I've encountered through prayer over the years in how I have witnessed many peoples' prayers answered including my own and it's not so much due to some whimsical notion of sending a message somewhere out there but that it actually taps into a supernatural God who has power over the universe to make things happen.

My own dad is a prayer warrior and I remember as a child learning to pray at a very young age and having these conversations with God that were very real. My dad taught us to have regular family devotions in the mornings (when time permitted) and definitely at night (especially when my favourite TV programmes were on); to say grace at the table before a meal and to finish our day with a prayer to God before bedtime. Something that he still does today and I strive to do with my family. He has a powerful relationship that doesn't waver with the tide and it was hard understand at times as a child but I've seen how his relationship has softened over the years and is very real.

As I entered into education and developed ideas of my own, my prayer life was not as strong until I rededicated my life in my mid 20's through and started again on my Christian journey to be reminded of the power of prayer.

I remember when I was still single and in my early 30s I lead a bible study and prayer group at the local PIC Pacific Islanders (Presbyterian) church which later developed into a early morning prayer group that still meets regularly almost twenty years after it was first established, every Monday morning at 6 - 7 am. There, I witnessed an elderly couple who fervently prayed that their children would come back to a relationship with God as they were the only ones still in a church. Both passed away within a few years of each other but their prayer legacy saw their children, grandchildren and now great grandchildren returning to church and a relationship with God.

I remember praying for a husband and children into my 30's and seeing a mountain somewhere overseas in one of my prayers, only years later to realise that my then husband to be was in the Nepals climbing mountains as a YWAM based missionary near Mt Everest (the tallest mountain in the world). Now that's a miracle that God can do some amazing miracles.

In a sense, I want to put it out there that prayer changes things, it takes that burden off of an individual and gives it to a creator God with a learned trust that it even if it may or may not happen, either way things will be okay because other neat things are going to happen along the way. I now have an amazingly supportive husband and some creatively amazing children - maybe if I hadn't prayed along the way, it could have been a different story.

If you've never tried it, give it a go and then you might like it. Take that burden off your shoulders and give it to someone who can really make things happen and then your present will give you hope for tomorrow...