Come on...ring those bells!

Acts 3:1 (Peter Heals the Crippled Beggar) One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer-at three in the afternoon.

Jim pointed out in his blog entry today a small, but important point in this first verse of Chapter 3. One I must have skipped over time and time again, to get to the story of the lame man’s healing miracle. The point being, John and Peter went to the temple to pray at a specific time, the 9th hour. There were other designated times for prayer back then, but the point being…prayer as a spiritual discipline was not only done in private or when prompted by the Spirit, but it was also organized and planned, with a designated time and place. Many churches today have abandoned this organized spiritual discipline, leaving prayer to our own individual devices & responsibility. Gone are the days when churches were built with a prominent steeple and bell tower, which often was used to call the community to their scheduled prayer meetings. I came across an old quote the other day: “Prayer is the rope in the belfry; we pull it, and it rings the bell up in heaven.”(author unknown). What a beautiful, descriptive analogy for prayer. Regardless of the obvious absence of the belfry in today’s church architecture, we should be mindful to keep the bell ringing…pulling the rope well and raising our prayers boldly before the throne of God! God bless the ministry of Jim and Olya and may their prayers be boldly raised and answered! On the journey together…Kathy