Prayer - Carlo Furlan, Acts 18 & 2 Cor. 1:8

Intimacy -
close and warm,
rough and awkward -
tightly bound.
A personal God.
Not a guarantee for
easy living
or the absence of pain
but 
a close-hugging presence,
always there.

Encouraging words
spoken into the darkness
can sustain us -
if only we can hear them 
through our lamentations.

Despair happens.
Overwhelming circumstances 
happen.
Death happens.
Yet we continue
to hope
and pray
and ask for prayer.

Prayer is a mystery,
waves of words
washing the shore
again and again
with no apparent result
at times.
Yet the God who has power
to raise the dead
can hear us
when we call.
So I will call
and hope
and
be 
encouraged.