Optimist’s Roundtable
By Martha Sykes
In the book of James, we can find a lot of advice for us as a church or as Christians living in this needy world.
James is one book that is easy to understand because he uses simple, straightforward prose, giving his advice. In chapter 5, James is talking about those who are suffering, those who are sick, and those who are sinning.
Do we know people who are suffering, sick or sinning? I’m sure most of you will say yes to that question. Well, James gives one prescription for all of them: PRAYER!!
If you are suffering, he says to pray. If there is sick among you, pray for them. If there is someone among you who has sinned and they confess their sin, pray for them.
We know prayer works; it’s been proven many times. Prayer needs to be an important part of our church and of our own individual lives. I sincerely believe that prayer changes people and situations. People I have known, and probably people you have all known,have been changed by prayer. There are those people who have inspired us by their lives, those who have something about their life, that inner peace, that ability to accept all the seasons of life, or to have compassion for others. These are things that stand out about them
Mother Teresa was one of those people. We can share wonderful stories about her sacrificial service to the most pitiful creatures on earth like the poor and the dying in Calcutta. Sometimes we run from such misery, but not her, What? she looked upon this misery and moved right in. How could she do that? The answer is prayer. As a nun, she devoted her life to a life of prayer. What prayer did was to empty or cleanse her life of all that was distraction in her life, and filled her with the power to be who she was as she went about serving those in need .
This tiny, fragile, frail, little woman was an inexhaustible and inexplicable power to love. She loved day in and day out, year after year, and through her love, she made a difference in this world.
There is a man by the name of Richard Rohr, who ran a retreat center in Mexico. He had a wonderful word for the spiritual quality that comes as a result of prayer. He calls it, “Holy spaciousness.” He says that’s what prayer does, It creates a holy spaciousness. It removes all that is distracting in our life, all the debris that accumulates in our life, that we carry around with us year after year. He says we have to make room for God, And prayer, he says, is the way you make room for God.
