Often, I have a quote or thought that just can’t make it into a sermon, because of time or application. I figured this could be a good platform for dissemniating some of the things that get omitted from a sermon or study. One such quote comes from Eugene Peterson’s great book Where Your Treasure Is. You can find a link to this book on the resources page, as well as copies on the resource table on Sunday mornings. Here you go:

Is there anything to do about it [the brokenness in the world] ? Most people think that there is . True , there are days when it looks as if the race is between bigotry and apathy , between the people who blame all our ills on a hated enemy and the people who have succumbed to the nothing-can-be-done disease . But in fact an enormous amount of energy is poured out each day to make things better : care for the environment , compassion for the hurt , concern for the poor , diligence in government . Great armies of people are out there teaching , healing , legislating , guiding , comforting , rehabilitating . Evil in both its obvious and subtle forms is being fought . But the impressive number of people committed to doing something about what is wrong with the world does not always bolster hope . A close observation of the lives of those who are trying to do something about the mess around us and an unsentimental look at the results of their efforts are not always heartening . Why , for instance , do people who do good so often behave so badly ? Doing good brings out the worst in some people . Why do they become so bad-tempered , so abrasive , so self-righteous ? Why do so many impressively launched crusades run out of gas so quickly ? Why do so many vigorous moral causes have such short lives ? Why does so much well-intentioned, righteous fervor dribble out into sentimentalism? Plunging into the battle does not always bring the intended results. Sometimes our efforts make things worse. Sometimes they make us worse.

Christians wake up in the middle of this mess every day and get out of bed to do something about it . What do we do ? If we polled our colleagues, as every now and then someone does, we would get a bewildering variety of responses. One of the responses, though, that would be in predictably short supply would be “pray.” I don’t mean that our polls would show that Christians do not pray but that most do not see prayer as the central and essential action to remedy the mess that we are in. Prayer is understood rather as a private , ” in-house ” activity . When it does occur in the public sector , it is ceremonial .

Eugene H. Peterson. Where Your Treasure Is ppg 36-37

What do you think? How does/can prayer actually be our first action against the brokenness in our world?