Hi Friends,

Well, we’re right in the middle of cookie, icing, brunch, heavy hors d’oeuvres, eggnog, & mulled cider season.  So the discipline of fasting, though radical in December, might just serve as an intelligent means of weight management!  But, that is not why we fast.

We fast as a reminder to ourselves that we are dependent on God and that our appetites are not our gods, and we fast because God’s Word often equates the most powerful prayer as that which is accompanied by fasting.  And as we pray, we are praying, together–across this country and in many other countries as well–for spouses for those who long to be married, for men to walk upright into the lives & relationships that God has designed them for, and for women to be willing to see how we need to change or grow for the sake of good, life-giving relationships/marriages.

So as we pray and fast, I want to share one thought which has been on my mind (which might not seem initially related to marriage and relationships–but hang with me!).  Late this afternoon, my friends, Bob and Ronda, and I went to take a gift to a client we know from the food bank where we volunteer.  He lives alone in a subsidized apt, with one bedroom, one sofa, and one tv.  The only decoration are 3 pictures propped against the wall’s edge:  one of Jesus, one of his deceased father, and one of his daughter, whom he has not seen since she was 10 (probably 20+ years ago).  As we stood there and prayed with him at the end of our visit–and it was truly a sweet time, the 4 of us holding hands, his stained through years of chain smoking and shaking for unknown reasons–I was struck by his the nature of his poverty.  It is most painfully emotional in nature.  He is profoundly alone.  He has some family in the area, but he’s not sure what, if anything, will end up happening for Christmas.  And I pondered as we prayed:  this man needs to be woven into a circle, a family, a community.

I don’t have too many illusions about rescuing people from dire circumstances.  My few years of urban ministry taught me my limits in those arenas.  But nevertheless, I do long to see people woven into circles beyond themselves.  The most natural starting place for single people seems to be marriage and, hopefully, family.  And this belief is integral to why we pray.  And yet, this alone isn’t the end game.  It seems like our souls cry out to be a part of an even bigger family.  Our trinitarian God (who exists in a 3 person community of sorts) has made us like him–people designed to belong, to be woven in, to be part of something far greater and bigger and richer and more alive than ourselves.  It’s as if it is written into our DNA.

This, then, is what we are ultimately praying for.  Ephesians 2:22 speaks of God’s people as “being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”  We want to be men and women who are capable of deep, mutual, life-giving, fruitful relationship.  We want to see all of us, men & women alike, increasingly able to love, to be others-centered, to give, and somehow to trust in the process that God will dwell with, among and even through us (and if this happens, you know a side benefit will be more marriages!).

So this Monday, I hope you’ll pray for marriages and for men & women to walk uprightly, AND I hope that you’ll also pray that Spirit-given love among and between us will trump loneliness in our cutlure.   Really, in the end, maybe all this prayer/fast stuff is this simple:  God said it’s not good for man to be alone.  And so, Lord God, we are saying, “We agree!  Bring on loneliness-trumping relationships in the lives of single people, as well as in the lives of married people, in our churches, in our communities.”  I think that prayer is right in line with the heart of God.

Blessings on you as you pray and fast with almost 400 others of us–

Connally

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