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2 Corinthians 9:2 Good News Translation
Your eagerness has stirred up most of them.
Have you ever attended a “high church?” I’m thinking of a Catholic, Episcopal, or Lutheran church that has a liturgy that the members and officiants follow reverently and slavishly. We have a liturgical church service in our church. It typically has about 20 members who show up faithfully every week. Twenty members is roughly the size of the Iowa City Church we attended for five years while I was in graduate school. We loved that little church and its members. Twenty members seems insignificant in our current church that must seat at least 2,000 people easily.
For the music parts, organists play the pipe organ. I love to close my eyes and feel the chords flow through my body in grand style. We have an eight-page liturgy printed in large type on tranquil green paper. The type is in both normal and bold letters. Bold indicates that everyone should read in unison. It also contains four significant passages of scripture, one from the Old Testament, one from the Psalms read responsively, one from the New Testament epistles and one from the Gospels. At times they all have a unifying theme. At other times they seem to have been randomly chosen. The choices of what to read all tend to follow the Common Lectionary of the Episcopal Church.
Usually once a month I am given a liturgy to read. During the prayer portion of the liturgy, we include a list of prayer requests submitted to the church during the preceding week. Never have I heard mention of answered prayers. I have felt that, just to bolster our own faith, it would be well for us to mention how at least some of the prayers have been answered. So last Sabbath when the theme was Mountain Top Experiences, and I was liturgist, I included the following:
“We don’t often hear about answers to prayer. I started treatment for prostate cancer 17 years ago. At my oncologist’s insistence, I quit taking my cancer meds since my stroke last October but continued hydrotherapy. The last blood work my oncologist did the beginning of this month indicated that my PSA is undetectable—PSA is a measure of the amount of cancer in my body. Please join me in praising the Lord for answering your prayers and my prayers.
“I invite you to kneel as we pray.”
Many of the 20 in attendance thanked me personally for including my experience in the liturgy. I do indeed thank and praise God for keeping me alive for the 17 years since I was first diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Thank You, Lord, that You do hear and answer our prayers. Forgive us for not thanking and praising You more often.
