Colossians 2:4 Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.

Yesterday evening, I was sitting on the couch with some friends and family having a lovely chat, winding down from a great baby shower. I was tired, dragging after only a few hours sleep, having spent 6 hours baking the previous day. All I wanted to do was lazily listen to the conversation around me and then crawl into bed. Suddenly, I realized the clock in the kitchen said 5:43 — completely energized, I sprang from the couch. “I gotta go!” I yelled behind me, racing from the room. Frantically I located my keys, some shoes and my purse and ran to the car – leaving my family and friends just sitting in my living room – and sped away from my house towards the pharmacy. You see, in all the fuss preparing for a baby shower, I’d forgotten to pick up my birth control pack for the new month, which I needed to start yesterday evening. The pharmacy closes at 6 o’clock.

You may be asking yourself how on earth this story could tie into a devotional? Well, I’ll tell you.

Yesterday’s sermon at church was a kick off of sorts for our week of prayer (Prayer 2010). My devotional this morning included the above verse from Colossians and was practically a continuation of my pastor’s message from yesterday. I wonder how God does that. Both messages drove home the point that we need to make time to pray. Pastor Paul quoted a philosopher yesterday (can’t remember the name) “One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness wasn’t from lack of time.” Ouch. He might as well have said “Tonya are you listening to this?” at the end of his statement. We have all kinds of reasons for why we don’t pray. Yesterday, I could have used every excuse usually reserved for not praying to explain why I just couldn’t get my prescription. I had people at my house (distractions), the pharmacy was closing in 13 minutes (time), I was utterly exhausted (laziness)…but I was VERY motivated to have my pills. It was important enough to me that none of the excuses mattered. It was so important in fact, that I dropped everything else I was doing, ditched my hostessing duties and ran out of my house. We all have things that hold that high of a place in our day. Playoff football tickets, fishing, pedicures, our nap, Facebook, e-mail, yoga etc. Think of the thing you would NEVER miss. That you’d drop anything for. That’s how we should feel about prayer. Something happens in my life, or someone comes to mind, everything else should suddenly be secondary as I bring my cares and concerns to Christ.

Apparently God thinks I really need to hear this message about prayer. Not only did our pastor preach on it Sunday and my devotional reinforced it this morning, but in addition, my small group is meeting together tonight to do our Prayer 2010 week at church. We’re going to pray for an hour. A few days ago, I would have said that an hour seems like an awfully long time to pray all at once. Now, based on what God’s been doing in my personal life regarding prayer, I know it’s going to be an incredible evening.