Prayer

Today at Haywood Street there was a very large crowd, more people than we've had recently when we opened the Clothes Closet. The Tuesday folks had put in some new round rods for shirts and moved out some of the long rods. They used up all the hangers, which was good because there were lots of clothes hung, but then we didn't have any hangers to use to hang the bags and bags of clothes still not hung up. The newsletter is requesting more hangers again.

We had two families who had 8 children between them, all under 10, I'd say. At lunch there were other people with new babies. The Clothes Closet had a good stock of children's clothes and we got a new bag full as I was going to lunch. That was a good thing. As school starts I am sure we will need more clothes.

A group from Birmingham Southern College in Birmingham were visiting. Six young men who think they want to become ministers were there with Susan Clopton's sister. They were attending a conference in Junaluska and had heard about Haywood Street and had to come. It was good to visit with Susan's sister and to send good wishes back to B'ham and Trinity and Jill Layne and Susan.

Lunch was delicious, as usual. It was all comfort food today, meat loaf, mashed potatoes, cabbage, biscuits, salad, and ice cream. My table had two young mother's and a dad with his daughter about 7 or 8 and some other men. One of the babies was only 7 days old. She was so tiny.

At church I sat next to Jody, who is heading the organization of the respite center, and Susan, who is organizing the Walk of Awareness. Brian's parents were both there and they served communion. Thomas was there and he had served the folks in the CC water and brought me back the recorder which I will listen to later this afternoon and see if we can begin on the book.

The sermon was on the Lord's Prayer, how shall we pray? We sang the Lord's Prayer, we said The Lord's Prayer, and then we studied it. Brian said that we are to "bother" God with our constant prayers. Indeed, Jesus often talks about prayers by those who don't give up. The Lord's Prayer is an example of our side of the conversation with God who is our Father, not some distant, condemning being. We keep his name holy, we want his Kingdom to come and we can do this by doing  His will(though this was not discussed in the sermon), we ask for our daily bread, no more, no less, we ask to have our debts forgiven. We don't want God to come repossess us. We have to forgive everyone else's debts, however. We ask that we not be led into temptation and that we be delivered from evil. All of these things are corporate, not singular requests. We are all one in this relationship with God.

I have not written in a long time, two weeks. I have been at Haywood Street for Journey Group, Walk of Awareness meetings, Holy Chaos of Wednesdays, and to hear Brian at Mars Hill. I think I am still thinking through all these activities and meetings and will have to come back later and revisit them.