Mar 22 - "Patient Prayer"

"Hear my cry, oh God, and listen to my prayer. I call upon you from the ends of the earth with heaviness in my heart; set me upon the rock that is higher than I." --- Psalm 61
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Waiting for God to answer your prayers is really hard sometimes. We are an impatient people. In today's fast-paced, text-messaging, status-updating, continually "connected" world, we struggle with being patient while an answer or response comes to one of our queries.

Last fall, Greta and I were questioning whether the church we attend was the right place for us to be. Even though we had been attending regularly and participating in various ministries here and there, for some reason after almost two years, were just not feeling connected. One of the challenges is that we have had two pretty amazing church experiences in our time together as a family. Our church when we lived in Florida, St. Andrew, as well as St. Lawrence, when we lived in Chicago, were wonderful communities where we felt enriched in ways which grew our faith materially during our time at each.

We prayed about this for quite some time, probably over a period of a few months. After talking to our daughters about it, we even tried another church one Sunday. As this continued, we decided to give our church one more shot. We "dug in", per se, to all that it had to offer; Maddy and I sang in the choir over Advent, Greta stepped into teaching Sunday school more often and we made special efforts to arrange our schedule, allowing us to participate in activities outside of the normal worship services. Of course, we continued to pray about it.

This past Sunday, I looked back on this time where we did not know if we were in the right place and realized, wow, God is great! Our prayers had been answered. Over the course of these past few months, we have felt wonderfully connected and enriched by the people of Holy Family Episcopal Church. It was as if God opened our eyes to the blessings which had been around us the whole time. We absolutely love our small but strong community of believers and see great things happening. All it took was time, patience and prayer...and God delivered!

So, be patient in your prayer. Allow God the time to work His miracles in your life. Do not assume that, just because your answer did not come immediately, God isn't putting things in place that will give you great blessings, if you only wait just a little bit.