The point of prayers

A friend wrote me yesterday after a year filled with the life and death of those she loves. "I've been asking myself all year what good it really does being a Christian our WHOLE lives when its the end that seems to be the important part and during our life the "best" we can hope for is peace in our spirit. I don't want to devaluate that, because I know those who have no peace, suffer greatly, but I hope you understand what I'm trying to say... "

I do understand what she wrote. Some days, as the apostle Paul wrote, if all we had was this life, we'd be hopeless and helpless:
"Unless Christ was raised to life, your faith is useless, and you are still living in your sins. And those people who died after putting their faith in him [would be] completely lost. If our hope in Christ is good only for this life, we are worse off than anyone else.

"But Christ has been raised to life! And he makes us certain that others will also be raised to life. Just as we will die because of Adam, we will be raised to life because of Christ. Adam brought death to all of us, and Christ will bring life to all of us" (1 Corinthians 15:17-22) 

The good news is that Christ bring hope to this life as well as the next. Though life's grief washes over us, God's goodness sustains and helps. His pilot's hand remains steady on the rudder of our little lifeboats, no matter how tempestuous the storms.

I lay awake in the night, thinking of the pain our daughter endures and the surgeon's report. Her operation went well. But, because all the steroids taken to manage arthritis, her bones have become so porous that he didn't know if they would support an ankle replacement. What next? I thought, as the radio played a worship song, "God is good, God is good, His love endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord for he is good..."

My feet are healthy. I looked at them this morning, wiggling my toes and flexing my ankle. I thanked God for health. W and I are grateful that we can run up and down stairs to get things for Kirsten. We're glad our walks invigorate us rather than causing us great pain. Our straight wrists and elbows bend easily and our shoulders rotate so we can reach high into the air.

Today, looking into the fog outside my window, I know God is near. Though there's not much about him I understand, I am confident that he could touch Kirsten and those others who suffer this Christmas. His word could heal completely without added effort on his part of theirs. The days ahead, uncertain though they seem, nestle in a file of the future, labeled, "He gives his beloved rest."

How does his peace settle your day today? Let his goodness be the point of your prayers.

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*Yet I am confident I will see the LORD's goodness while I am here in the land of the living. Wait patiently for the LORD. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the LORD." Psalm 27:13–14 NLT

*[Paul wrote,] But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Philippians 3:7-11 NIV