What a way to start a week.
It’s been a part of my Mondays ever since I started at GUIDEPOSTS—back when my hair was brown instead of, well, graying brown, and I didn’t have kids or a mortgage or life insurance.
We sat around the conference table that we still use and read the letters of people asking for us to pray for them, a tradition that goes back to the beginning of GUIDEPOSTS. I can see how it might have started, people sending in their stories or responding to stories and asking, “By the way, could you pray for me?” Some editor probably thought it would be a nice thing to do for the readers. What they must have found out immediately was that it was wonderful thing for the editors.
The requests come in by email now as well as letters and phone. Anyone who has logged on to OurPrayer.org and seen those requests and prayed for them knows what a blessing it is. A blessing to pray for others? That might sound surprising. Yes, sometimes the struggles that other people are going through can be overwhelming. The illnesses, drug addictions, relationship problems, financial stresses, job losses add up into a sorrowful stew.
But there’s always something else at work when we read those requests aloud on Monday mornings. There’s always hope and thankfulness. I can feel it kicking around the table and nudging us before we’ve really started our editorial day and when we close our eyes and pray, I imagine it spreading like an epidemic from this building in midtown Manhattan where our editorial offices lie and traveling across the Hudson and flooding all those places where needs are great, including around our table.
Yes, the news is bad. There are terrible, tough, demeaning, dispiriting things going on in people’s lives—people we love and care about. But there’s always a place to gather, even if it’s online, where the good news can be found.
It’s a great way to start a week—with hope and wonder and prayers.
Rick Hamlin is the executive editor at GUIDEPOSTS.
