Chai Tea and Hope for the Nations

Some days life just makes you wonder, like when you boil a pot of Chai Tea and in transferring the liquid to a glass jar it splits and floods the bench, the cupboard and the carpet, and all you wanted to do was sit down and pray with a hot cuppa. 

When you finally get to sitting down you wonder what to pray about anyway? The world seems in such a mess, surely it is close to the expiry date.  Where do you start and how do you remember to pray for the situations that bombarded you in the morning news?

It seems almost blasé when you hear bad news on the radio to stop and pray for the real live people caught in that train wreck, the tornado, the flood, the war etc, but if you waited until you were seated with your chai tea, would you even remember the situations you were praying for?

Our prayer releases God’s hope and Hand in the situation.  Perhaps when you are sitting sipping the chai with your girlfriend in the café and sharing concerns for another friend, it would be wiser to stop and pray for that person, and bless her with God’s purpose and intention?

In the drive through waiting for that cup of tea, to quietly focus on the car in front or the girl behind the window in the headset and pray for God’s purpose and intention over that life.  We are called to pray without ceasing, but that doesn’t mean to sit all day cross-legged and present shopping lists of dramas and demands to God, but to bless the situation and people around us or presented to us with hope and God’s purpose and intention.

When you’re helping friends move house and they’ve pulled a muscle, or the headache has caught up with them, to simply lay a hand on them and bless them with God’s healing.   We have the power inside of us to change the situation around us.

Simply listening to bad reports only brings depression and despair as we glance at the world over the rim of our cup.  We can make a difference by prayer and bring hope to the nations every time we pray . . . for the patient in the ambulance screaming by, the mother fighting with her toddler in the shopping aisle, and the little granny hobbling down the street with her walker.  We won’t know the effect of the prayer until eternity, but if we plant the seeds now, we will surely reap a good harvest.