What Do We Pray For?

I read Garfield, Dilbert, and Foxtrot regularly on Yahoo Comics, and I read this one recently.  What a perfect illustration of James 4:2-3!  "Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts."

When you pray, do you pray more for yourself than for others?  I find that I often do.  It's so easy to get caught up in what we're doing, our problems, our goals, that we forget that we're here to help others.  And when we do pray for others, do we then neglect to follow up?  Your neighbor (you know, the one with the three toddlers and the husband who has to work long hours) is sick.  Do you just pray for her and then continue with your life, not bothering to stop by with a casserole or plate full of cookies?  Do you pray for the miners trapped in Chile when they just got trapped, but never bother again.  "Oh, God's got it handled," you tell yourself.  "He doesn't want to listen to me jabber on and on about the same things."  Maybe, but that's no excuse to allow our hearts to become hardened to the needs of others.

"But what can I do?" you ask.  "There is a whole world full of needy people, and I barely have the resources to help myself."  Perhaps, but great things can get done when people pull together their meager resources.  So pray not for yourself, but for those around you and those across the globe.  And then get up and do something about it!  This is mainly me talking to myself, 'cause I know I could use this pep talk!

In case you're wondering, Jason did not find an ultra-rare, holo-foil, Charizard Pokemon card in that pack.  Currently, he's working on selling his soul to Eileen Jacobson for her Charizard card.  But that's a topic for another time....