Prayer for the Environment

I started this blog to chronicle my attempt to pray for every endangered species. Quite honestly, it was a massive undertaking. I'm not sure I regret it, but I do think that it was foolish. Foolish in a godly way? I'm not sure. But the extinction of species is in many ways just the tip of the iceberg of environmental problems, and always caused by some other, larger issue. Is it even helpful to pray for endangered species, or just frustrating for me? I know that I've failed at it pretty spectacularly (I was planning to be done last July, and I'm only slightly past the half-way point).

But can't God use whatever I do that is searching for Him for His purposes? I would still love to finish my quest, even if much, much later than I wanted to. The internet is full of stories of people finishing amazing tasks in incredibly short periods of time... but is that the best way to do things? Hurried, stressed, and concentrating on deadlines?

I am committing to finishing my quest. God will use me--use us, if you would join me! Prayer is powerful.

New Year!

It's been a while since I've posted here. I have been reflecting a lot on prayer and its power and where I want and God wants me to go with this blog and the challenge that inspired it.

I just read This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti, a book about spiritual warfare. Prayer is depicted as just so incredibly powerful in this book, as something that really can affect change. It really inspired me to pray a lot more, and hopefully I'll be able to continue to remind myself about the power and importance of prayer.

Secondly, I've decided to extend my challenge, and aim to finish praying for endangered species by the end of this year, so by December 31, 2013. I can't believe that it's already 2013!

I hope everyone has a wonderful new year!

Routine

This past week, praying has been a struggle. I've been so busy that I put pressure on myself to finish praying earlier so I can go do "productive" things, with the result that my prayer time has of course been less God-driven and more me-driven. I've also gotten super behind on my schedule, which isn't that set in stone, but still, being like six days behind 'schedule' stresses me out, makes me feel guilty, and makes me want to pray less.

I guess this sort of problem is pretty inherent in what I'm trying to do, i.e. praying through a list of names. The temptation to just read the name, briefly send them 'happy thoughts' or whatever, and move on to the next name has been really strong lately. I pray that this week I'll be able to slow down, focus, and give my full attention to God and my prayers.

Behind!!

I am so behind in my "schedule" for prayer for endangered species--about five days behind. I have had a hard time carving out time for prayer now that I'm back at school, of course made only worse by the knowledge that I have twice as much or three times as much to "do" as I would on a normal day.

There are so many problems with that thinking! Firstly, prayer isn't something to do, something to check off your to-do list each day. Prayer is joyful time, unscheduled time, time spent with God learning about Him and talking to Him and asking Him about what's most important to me. Secondly, when I do allow myself to get behind, prayer becomes that much more of a chore, because there's so much more to do, and I know that I should take even more time to completely finish. Did that make sense?