Mark Byron

Cancer Blog Prayers

My cousin-in-law Matt is in the hospital being treated for lymphoma; he has a blog/journal going and gave me the go-ahead to link to it. He's currently (7AM post today) running a 103° temp in between chemo sessions.

Prayers for Matt would be helpful. Stopping by his blog and giving him cheerful greetings from the Peanut Gallery would be even more helpful.

Disturbances in the Force

I'm not exactly sure what's all involved, but I'm sensing a lot of negative spiritual flow this weekend.

The Alito hearings that will start tomorrow have brought a lot of contention to Washington, with the secularists on the left looking at their next-to-last stand of retaining a liberal court. The real last stand would be (if Alito's confirmed) when one of the liberal justices (Stevens and/or Ginsberg) would be replaced, creating a 5-1-3 conservative majority; the court would be 4-1-4 post-Alito. No, not all the folks opposing Alito are with the forces of darkness, but there's a lot of darkness on that side of the aisle.

The bad vibe isn't just on the left. The rhetoric has some less-than-edifying thoughts flowing from the right, as folks more interested in personal economic gain than stemming amorality are returning fire at the usual suspects on the left. Even the theocons (if I'm not mistaken, the latest Justice Sunday went down this evening) can get into a just-win-baby mentality that can be unbecoming and unscriptural. Demonizing the left as retaliation for demonizing Alito isn't helpful in clearing the spiritual air.

Also, Sharon's political death (even if he gets out of the hospital in one piece, it'll take a full miracle to have him healthy enough to stay on as PM) has brought a few of Screwtape's minions out. One seems to have got into Rat Pobertson (as the Capital Steps malaprop guy might call him) thought pattern and caused the punditry to backfill rather than pray for peace of Jerusalem when it desperately needs it. Folks and principalities that would rather see a lot of conflict in the Holy Land want to see things fall apart in Israel and see either a over-hawkish right or an over-dovish left get ahold of things.

I'm not sure that the Kadima folks have things perfectly down, but they seem to be closest-to-correct of the three main camps, and that's bad news for the bad guys.

On top of all that political and geopolitical stuff, our church is striving to spend more time in prayer and listening to God. That's really going to get Ol' Sloughfoot ticked and may be the core of the spiritual heaviness that I'm sensing.

Romulan Bird of Pray

I'm blogging from a hotel in Romulus, MI, near the Detroit Airport; there is a Remus, but it's up about a hour west of Midland. Our flight to Phoenix is due to take off at 7:50 tomorrow morning.

Our original plan was to get up about 3:30AM and drive down tomorrow, but a snowstorm made it more prudent to drive down tonight. We were averaging about 50MPH due to slick roads rather than traffic (northbound traffic was much busier), so a two-hour drive wound up taking a nerve-wracking three.

The main prayer request comes from a matriarch from our old Vineyard church, who's having her clan over for Thanksgiving tomorrow. Half her kids have found the Lord, but half haven't, despite being raised in a solid evangelical church. The spouses of the unsaved kids have little exposure to the Gospel, so she's planning to politely corral the clan and give a brief overview and cajole them into thinking about their relationship (or lack thereof) to God.

Pray for our matriarch-friend and all the other folks who will be witnessing to their unsaved or "backslidden" relatives this weekend.

The Prayer Blog

I've decided to give up on the World magazine blog contest. I felt myself leading with my ego and that I'm struggling to get interested in current events on a regular basis. Also, the strictures of their format weren't all that fun.

I'd like to develop my prayer life a bit better, and this post from Tim Plett struck a cord; here's the last paragraph.

It struck me this morning that it would be a good if there would be a place where bloggers could post their prayers--where we needs could be published--where bloggers could actually pray together--if cyber praying is in fact a prayer meeting. It would, however, need to be at a blog with a bigger audience than mine. But it would seem good to me. If it seems good to the Holy Spirit perhaps it will happen.

Your wish is my command; presenting The Prayer Blog. I'm starting out by putting out prayer concerns in different buckets (World, National, Church, Missions/Evangelism, Personal) and having people comment in extra prayer requests.

I'm more than open to suggestions and co-bloggers; I'm using Blogger for this, for it allows for multiple bloggers better than my current Typepad account. I'd like quite a few people to share the load of running that site.

Evening Prayers

I hope to get the Edifier mojo back tomorrow; it's been a rough week. It might not be as edifying, but I've got a few prayers to throw at the Blogosphere.

Two prayer requests come from my church circle. The daughter of our old home group pastor in Lake Wales is in the University of Florida's Shands research hospital getting treated for head trauma from an car accident a week and a half ago; it looks like she'll avoid having surgery, but there's a lot of nerve-brain connections that need to be reconnnected. Pray for her and her parents, who are up in Gainsville with her.

The second is for a new home for our church, Father's Heart. The landlord's overhauling the warehouse next to the office space we've been renting, and is showing us the door as of the end of the year. Pray that we find a good place to light.

Watts goin' on? European leftists often long for the spirit of '68 (when their lefty kids took to the streets big time), but it looks like France is getting a different '68 flashback, that of race riots. For over a week, the Muslim ghettos are erupting.

Pray that cooler heads prevail. The answer isn't with radical Islam or street goonishness or secularist pontification, but the love of Christ.