BAPTIZED PATRIOTS

To apply our baptismal vows to our citizenship requires that we go beyond symbolic gestures and acts when confronting complex societal problems--

such gestures as prohibiting flag-burning as a way to make us loyal and passionate about our country, or such acts as posting the Ten Commandments in public places as a way to make us moral.

The destruction of a symbol does us no harm. The public display of rules for living, by itself, does us no good.

What is needed is application of baptismal vows to our very souls so that each and every person of faith--

whether it be the faith of baptism, the faith of Bar Mitzvah or the initiatory rites of Hinduism--

that every person of faith be part of turning back the tide of secularization in our increasingly individualistic society.

by Bill Kolb
from "Baptized Patriots"

Think of the many times you have been asked or moved to pray for someone, or to pray for peace throughout the world. ...

Or, how often have you been in a struggle with life yourself, and felt like you needed the prayers of others to see you through?

Prayer for ourselves and others can become an overwhelming task. Not because we lack the compassion or even motivation, but because there are simply so many needs. ...

"Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear." (Isaiah 65:24)

God reads the prayers of our heart even before they have been formed into words or vocalized by our mouth.

Prayer becomes not so much trying to remember the names and needs of each person or group.

Rather the task of intercessory and petitionary prayer becomes opening our heart to receive all the needs and then asking the Holy One to read what is there. ...

A Process for Praying for Others

1. Sit quietly and center yourself in the present moment.
2. Slowly read each name listed.
3. As you read imagine the name floating into your heart.
4. Bring your awareness to being in the presence of God.
5. Open your heart and ask God to read the names that are written there.
6. Thank God for the time you?ve spent together and for listening and answering you in your prayers.

by Renée Miller
from "Introduction to Praying for Others"

Add a Name to the Prayer List
Send us the name of a person, a place, a group, anything you wish
to surround with prayer, and we will add it to our prayer list
so that others may join you in prayer.

To do something new, something you have not done before--it takes guts. ...

Parents know about doing something new. They were once carefree people. They were once the masters of themselves, without someone depending on them for life itself.

Did you feel sometimes, as I did, late one night, before becoming a mother for the first time, that you just were not ready for this? "I can't do this," I sobbed in sheer panic, and a stern voice within me said, "But you're going to." ...

The church knows about this too. We all do. To all of us there come these moments in life: moments when it is clear that we must move forward in something quite new about which we know very little.

One of our great sources of pain and fear is this: Most of the important things about which we must decide in life are things about which we know next to nothing.

• What if the new job I have been offered is not right for me?
• What if the sweetheart I think I know so well changes into someone else? ...

You can't wait until all the data is in before deciding on something new in your life. All the data cannot be in until you've gone ahead and done it. Then you know, and not until then. ...

by Barbara Crafton
from "Don't Know, Must Choose"