Day 3

"This, then, is how you should pray." Matt. 6:9
"For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." Mark 10:45

I only had to work for 2 hours today, so I decided to take on a nice challenge and choose two of Jesus' principles. Both of these are pretty central to Jesus' teachings: praying and serving. There's no way I'd be able to come close to what I should be doing as a Christian, but I will definitely do my best.

I've never been a great pray-er. When we were kids, my brother and I alternated praying for dinner. We would always use one of two prewritten prayers. We said them as fast as possible in the most monotone manner we could, opening our eyes during the "Amen" so we could start eating ASAP. As I discerned my call to ministry and developed my personal theology, etc., I began to branch out slightly, but I frequently forgot to pray at meals and rarely did so throughout the day. Even now, Wes and I pray together at meals and before we go to sleep, but I frequently forget to do so on my own.

It's not that I don't think praying is important, it's just that I don't always remember to do so. It's not a habit, and that's my own fault. But Jesus clearly shows us how to pray, and that we should do so often. In his final night of life, he prayed for hours on end. So today I tried to pray throughout the day. I wouldn't spend a day only speaking to Wes at meals and right before bedtime, so why in the world would I do so with God? I prayed randomly today--for a beautiful day, for the wonderful things he's given me, for food, for books, for Wes, etc. Then I forgot later on in the day...but I'll try again tomorrow. My goal is to be in conversation with God each day.

As far as serving, one of my New Year's resolutions was to do one day of service per month. I've done none. Jesus spent almost every waking moment of the day serving. He told his disciples to follow his example, and endowed them with his powers. Yet I spend way too much of my time watching TV, lounging around, and thinking about how the world would be better if people would do more---without bothering to do anything about it.

So today I started one of many service projects I plan on doing during this journey, and hopefully beyond. I want to go to the Trenton soup kitchen, work at Habitat, etc., but I started small today. I signed up to help clean up the church, so I walked down today and cleaned out the welcome center. I sweated up a storm and threw out a bunch of stuff, and now it's possible to find stuff. Later this week, I plan on going back to scrub the floors and possibly the walls. Next up: helping people.

All in all, it was a good day. I caught myself getting upset driving today, but hopefully I can keep working on that--especially with the whole praying throughout the day thing. Prayers, please??