I showed up at the bus stop ten minutes before my bus home, and was informed that the driver had left five minutes earlier.  After speaking with the guy helping people load onto the correct busses I learned that I could get to DC on the next bus, not back to Hampton Roads.  Washington DC is still about three hours (no traffic) from home, but it’s closer than Philly.  I called my wife, and asked her to come get me that night at 10pm when the bus would arrive.

A few minutes later I get a call back, and Bethany told me that one of our mutual friends, Nicki, has some friends in DC who are coming down to Hampton Roads the next morning.  Plus, they have a spare bedroom where I can sleep.  Once I get to DC, after a short metro ride, I get picked up by Adam (Nicki’s friend).  I met Lindsey, his wife, when we arrived at their beautiful home, and soon afterwards I crash.  The next morning they brought me down with them on their trip.

I know I shouldn’t be amazed at the willingness of the church to serve others, but often I am.  Standing in Philadelphia I had already begun researching rental cars, Amtrak tickets, and a variety of other ways to get home.  I honestly figured I would need to figure out how to do it on my own.  Yet even though I felt alone in Philadelphia, I wasn’t really alone.  I had an army of friends willing to do anything to help me out.

I should mention that besides Adam and Lindsey, and Nicki (who got me in touch with them), there were several others who offered to drop everything and come get me.  There were even more that would have been willing had I called them.  All of this just serves to remind me how blessed I really am.

In what ways are you blessed beyond what you deserve?

When something isn’t working, the temptation is to keep trying it, and assuming that it’ll work out eventually.

Yet, rarely does that work effectively.  But what if we did something different?  Anything different.  I’m normally a silent pray-er so what if I prayed aloud?  Or perhaps wrote out my prayers?  Maybe if you pray sitting in your living room, you went out and sat on the porch, or laid on the floor?  A small change in style or posture or location can make your prayer life totally different.

What if you mixed up the contents of your prayers?  If you’re a big picture kind of person, pray for specific needs of those in your life, or vice versa.  There’s many different things we can do to introduce variety into our time with God.  And who knows, maybe that little change will plunge us back deep into our prayers.  Maybe through changing something as simple as how we pray can inspire us to connect with God on a deeper level.  Maybe a little change can fix our lifeless prayers.

If you pray, how do you normally pray?

To conquer being stuck we must continue moving.

That might mean coming at the problem from a different direction, or thinking outside the box.  For those who get stuck in a job, it might mean creating an element of their job that they truly enjoy.  For those who get stuck in grief, it might just be leaning into it.  Yet, regardless of what has us stuck, if we want to get through it, we can’t just sit down.  We need to view being stuck as a temporary setback, not a life sentence.

This works spiritually as well.  Perhaps you feel stuck in your prayer life.  You just don’t feel the passion for it like you used to.  Keep moving.  Trying a different style of praying, try praying at a different time of day, trying something different, just keep moving.  Maybe you feel like your spiritual life is stuck, that you aren’t growing.  Try volunteering somewhere, or giving something away, or joining a small group.  Just keep moving.

When have you been stuck?  What was it that eventually got you un-stuck?

Now, don’t get me wrong.  If it wouldn’t end in my untimely death (I’m bad at backpacking) I would enjoy backpacking on my own.  Yet it was interesting that even though this guy was out in the mountains alone when we offered him a spot at our campfire to hang out, he joined us for quite a while.  It’s crazy that community is such a basic human need.  It’s like we are all wired in a way that makes us long for a place to belong.

Obviously this has church implications.  People need connections, and that’s why larger church have no choice except to move towards building a small group ministry.  In fact, if you point out any healthy church that’s actively growing and making progress for the kingdom all of them have some way of helping people connect with others.  They all have some kind of program that fulfills that basic human need for community.

Are you in a small group?  What’s your favorite part of being in it?