Both the church I went to as a teenager and the camp I worked at had these great, old-fashioned porches. You know the kind, the ones that wrap around and have plenty of chairs for crowds to gather. These two porches frequently inspired great conversation whenever two or more people gathered on them.
We would talk about art and music and how they played into our faith. We would discuss lofty questions like "how many angels can dance on the head of the pin" (my friend Dave would say "millions and millions, angels are not spacialy challenged!") and the more serious questions about what God wanted us to do with our lives and what He was teaching us in that moment. This was quite honestly a magical time in my spiritual life, a time when spontaneous prayer was normal and good, deeply affecting conversation was the norm.
I sort of thought that life would always be like this, surrounded by conversation and the excess time to sit and trade stories with my friends.
My house has a great porch with a pretty great view, but it mostly serves as a storage facility for excess stuff, and a place for my cats to sack out in the sun on a fuzzy blanket.
Because the truth is that I don't have a lot of excess time right now for deep conversation. Whatever good talks I have with my wife or friends usually happens in the car on a trip somewhere. Whatever bandwidth I have in my brain is usually reserved for scheduling family events, paying bills and attempting to finish the book I'm writing.
Two things happened to me recently that have gotten me thinking of those porches and the spiritual life they represented to me.
The first was that a few weekends ago I actually went back to my old church and sat on that porch and remembered. The second was what we've been talking about in my life-group (I recommend highly finding one and plugging in) recently.
We always have a great time of prayer together, and if you hang out with the same folks long enough you will see people go through the cycles of life. There will be times when everything is falling apart and you need to seriously pray for someone's daily need to be met. You need to pray for physical healing for your brothers and sisters and all sorts of other important things.
But what we have been realizing is that you can get caught up in praying for the day to day stuff and forget the big picture of faith.
At the end of the book of Colossians Paul asks that the church he is writing to would "pray for us too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I'm in chains."
Hold the presses here. Paul is not asking for people to pray that he would get out of prison, but that the Lord would use the situation to open a door for the message of Jesus.
I don't know about you, but my request would be about the immediate thing; "pray that God gets me out of here!"
But there is something beyond the immediate need.
Here is where I think the two thoughts (talking about big picture stuff on the porch like "God's will" and small picture, everyday stuff like praying for a sick friend) collide. They are both important to remember, and equally important to pray for and dwell on. If my good friend asks me to pray for him or her because they are having a rough day, then it's important to God because He cares about rough days. But I also want to pray for my friend to understand how their lives weave into the fabric of what God is doing in their little corner of the world. I want to pray that they would understand how God has created them (what their "calling" in life is); what their gifts and talents can profit their world for the Lord and those around them. It's easy to pray "God, get them thought this day." It's tougher to remember to lift our eyes up and realize that that friend has a role to play in God's plan, and to pray that they would understand and see that.
I'm going back to that camp this summer, and I'm going to sit on that porch overlooking the lake and spend some quiet time praying for those who the Lord has placed in my life (my wife and two daughters, my lifegroup, the guy in the store in swapped funny stories with at the check out counter). I'm going to pray for the immediate needs and the big picture stuff too.
And then I think I'll go for a swim.
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