A stack of prayers

Lately I’ve taken up the habit of praying through index cards. My college lit professor did this, endlessly walking around the campus pond praying for our needs. He knew our needs because he’d had private interviews with us, where he’d scrawled the information down in bullet points. Then he took to the pond, shuffling through cards all the while.

So I have started, too. I walk the Virginia roads with my ever-growing stack, praying for my uncles, a cousin, a downstairs neighbor who will soon have a baby, a pastor friend who just lost his wife, the end of Ebola …

I walk fast while I pray, infused with a sense of joining God in the fight for His people. I feel like a soldier, positioned against everything evil and wrong in the world. But at the same time I feel like a child, intently talking to a father whose favor I have found.

I love to come to pray because I can ask God anything. I have this great white blank space, on which I can sketch my rainbow of desires—and who is looking on at the canvas? The only One who can do anything to help me. The One who will do everything to help me. I flip a card. This one is dated Sept. 29, and in red ink says, “Let Jonathan and me find a spiritual home.”

Ah, the old spiritual home request. This one has been at the forefront of my thinking since Jonathan and I began dating. We knew back then that finding the right church for us could be a sincere struggle because of our differing histories and worship-style preferences—to say nothing of doctrinal convictions of varying shades. We seemed to have such different ideas about how a person should do church. How would we ever find one that felt like home to both of us?

Of course, it ended up that our differences were not as dramatic as we feared or liked to think—particularly after two years of shared spiritual growth. But since we moved, we have found the church question roughly as difficult as we expected. After much consideration, we chose a Baptist church about 35 minutes away. Our new church is vaulted, warm, and full of life and truth. I’m tempted to believe it’s too far away—especially with Jonathan’s busy school schedule. When I think those thoughts aloud my mother reminds me that some people in China ride bicycles all night to get to church, and that leaves me mute.

Two weeks ago, God began to answer my prayer visibly as we sat in the church office having our membership interview. The elder conducting it asked us to articulate the gospel, to share our testimonies, and then to explain our spiritual gifts. When we had, the elder intimated to us that he habitually prays through the entire church directory. I envisioned how thick my index card stack might grow if I began doing the same. I love the idea. It sounds like home.