Blog:FOREST LAKE TALKS

In the Lenten Guide – Walking in the Way of Jesus: A New Way – There are two sheets that explain and invite us into a Lenten Prayer Practice. For every day of Lent there is a suggestion for your prayers for that day located in the community in which we live!! Jesus came to bring Good News to the world. Surely, we can pray up good news for our own community! Each day we ask you to focus your prayers on the community on and around Decker Boulevard. The prayer list grew out of our congregation’s work in The Decker Collective. This partnership with Serve and Connect and many other community leaders and organizations, is aimed at building community, creating partnerships between at-risk neighborhoods and police jurisdictions, and making both sides of Decker Blvd safer and more vibrant. So, we began the prayer list asking us to pray for Serve and Connect, their staff and their headquarters, now called Greg’s Place (after Kassy Alia Ray’s first husband, FA Police Officer Greg Alia, who lost his life in the line of duty here in Forest Acres). Pray for Kassy Alia Ray and her new family. Pray for the funding to make Greg’s Place a stable, sustainable place from which to bring good news to the community. Pray for The Decker Collective work. You get the idea. If you’d like to, you could even send them a card telling them you have prayed for them. And if you don’t know where Serve and Connect is located, use the address and drive by. Send a prayer in their direction as you drive by.

Then, work your way down the list, remembering the students, staff and teachers at the schools in our community. Apartment complexes make up a good part of this list. We know that some in these complexes are very close to the verge of homelessness and that they often lack the stability that homeownership creates. Pray!

I am convinced that there are some things that God does not or will not do until we pray. God invites us into partnership. We must walk the path of discipleship and be willing to do the work of following. God is not a cosmic fairy godmother, granting our wishes before we ask, but a loving, creative, Spirit who invites us to create the reality of love, justice and peace that is possible only when God is present. There is a lot of bad news in the world. Don’t focus on that. Instead, focus on what God can do. Then, we are to work and live and pray in such a way that children at Jackson Creek Elementary go home with a backpack of food every weekend so they won’t be hungry. We can pray for Capt. Russell Brewton, the RCSD Captain who oversees the Sheriff’s Department Community Action Team – Region 2 (in which we are located). He sees a lot of sadness and a lot of bad. Pray for him, and for his family and for his heart, mind and soul to be protected from the sadness he must see. Don’t just say “thoughts and prayers.” Pray.