Ever get that feeling that you’ve got too many people to pray for? When an email comes in or I get a phone call or I hear some news, I’ll scribble the name down on a yellow Post-it note I keep on my desk or a purple Post-it note I’ve got in my pocket, just to keep track. Lately the names have been piling up.
This morning when I glanced at the list, I thought, “Ouch! Too much sorrow going on! I can’t take it anymore.” Looking at all those names was overwhelming: Jenny’s daughter Sarah, Charlie and his family, Emma and her brother, Renee and her husband, Carolyn’s mom, Sylvia, Susan, Randy, Rebecca, Michael, Brendan’s baby. On it goes.
It wasn’t just the names, though, that seemed overwhelming; it was all the stuff people were facing: alcoholism, death of a spouse, loneliness, despair, grief, undiagnosed illnesses, painful treatments for cancer, job loss, relocation, recovery from surgery. Doesn’t God ever think it’s too much? Does he get tired of it?
I closed my eyes and prayed my way down the Post-it note in my head, letting my mind meander, stumbling here and there, recalling a name, picturing a person, remembering a phone call. Guess what? It was the best five minutes of my day, the one time I wasn’t really thinking of myself and my own relatively minor concerns.
Once, years ago, I said to my wife, “We’ve got too many friends.”
“You can never have too many friends,” she responded.
I don’t think you can have too many people to pray for. I have a feeling that God drops these concerns in our laps for our own good as much as for those we remember. Love defies the laws of physics. The more you give away, the more you have. That’s the work of prayer.
But I could use a new Post-It note.
