• Prayer is our heartbeat
There are a few more (see website here) but I've been kind of fixated on this one for a while. Prayer is the basis for everything that goes on. The analogy is simple - without a heart beat, we're dead. And without prayer - a constant, dynamic connection to God - any idea or project or activity the church can dream up, is likewise dead.
Prayer is our heartbeat.
I've thought about this a lot recently. Mainly because my husband's heart stopped a few weeks ago.
It was a very weird day.
A woman we'd met only once before spent a big chunk of her day with her hands inside his chest, fixing a diseased valve and removing a section of ballooned aorta before it went pop. For 6 and a half hours his heart was motionless, his lungs deflated and pushed to the side, while a bypass machine took over all vital functions. Blood was removed from his body, filtered, cooled and oxygenated before being returned by a mechanical pump - allowing the surgeon to works in a bloodless surgical field.
I now officially LOVE this woman - and the team of people who looked after him during his 9 day stay at the Heath. The thank you cards and trays of Dunkin Donuts were a deeply inadequate expression of thanks but I honestly don't know how to gift wrap such a thing and anyway - everyone loves donuts.
On 7th January my husband had NO heartbeat. But - it wasn't over. Another mechanism had kicked in and was refusing to let him go. The period in ICU was temporary. It facilitated surgery that resulted in a person with waaay more energy than he's had for years and who constantly ticks like a bomb because the new valve is titanium based and will last longer than the rest of him. Totally worth it. Plus he has this really cool scar:
And now we are collectively experiencing a very weird period in history.
There are record numbers of people in the ICU departments across the country and across the globe. Nations all over the world are in various states of lockdown to control the spread of Covid-19 and the resulting illness that can accompany it. We are in the middle of something quite extraordinary that we have no blueprint for.
Being unconscious and sedated is not normal, healthy or desirable. Being intubated and on a ventilator is not the default position of a human being.
If prayer is our heartbeat, then to be prayer-less is unnatural and temporary. But like the ICU, there are mechanisms in place that mean it's not the end. God is like, This thing can't die. I'm taking over. I'll pump the blood and keep this thing going until you're strong enough. Until you can wake up.
This thing isn't over Xx
In the same way, the Holy Spirit helps us where we are weak. We do not know how to pray or what we should pray for, but the Holy Spirit prays to God for us with sounds that cannot be put into words. (Romans 8:26)
Why Pray? (247)
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