When I Fail to Pray

I have committed to pray daily for a 5th grade teacher and a reading specialist at a local elementary school. I am also a room mother for that 5th grade teacher's class. It is easy for me in my flesh to carry out room-motherly duties. I enjoy kids and it's not hard for me to look forward to spending time with them at lunch or in the classroom during a math lesson or at a Christmas party. So, I do it...mostly in my flesh, but prayerfully increasingly in the Spirit.

Praying daily for their teacher, however, is not so easy and natural for me. So, I pray every other morning or so with a half-hearted shout out to God on her behalf. Something about her having a good day and having patience with the kids. The end. Duty done.

This morning, without having resolved it before the new year began, God answered my pleas for Him to help me wake up earlier than usual and spend time in His Word and in prayer. He granted me my desire and I was able to spend some real time in real prayer for my teacher. God did something amazing.

When I went to the school today to eat lunch with the kids (easy), I asked how their Christmas breaks were, etc. They told me right off the bat that their teacher had had a great break and that she was "being very nice". Gratefulness and praise immediately filled my heart. After lunch, the kids lined up to head back to the classroom. I finally saw my teacher...smiling more brightly than I had ever seen. She waved and quickly approached to envelop me in a warm "so good to see you" hug. She told me how grateful she was for the gift I had given her before the break and how perfect it had been for her. My heart melted in worship that God would be so unbelievably good to her and me despite my failure to pray. He was at work while I wasn't praying and he worked when I asked Him to. He works. And when I pray, I get to see and experience that work and worship Him for it.

The gift I had given her was a book that was given to me last Christmas. It was a small book of daily prayers that I had only read a few of and picked it off my shelf to give to her. Because I was lacking the funds, I re-gifted a book that was meant to be a blessing to me...and in return I got a bigger blessing than I could have hoped for. God was Himself - good - apart from me and somehow He used me in His doing good. Wow. May I be emboldened to pray more...really pray. More.