Pray for One Person
It is a powerful thing to feel seen.
Today is Thanksgiving.
And while this holiday is all about being grateful, all about family and quality time and joy and food and community, there are many people across the country and all over the world who are experiencing times of great loss, great suffering, and unimaginable trauma.
In thinking about these people, I am reminded of this blog post, and more specifically the call from a pastor at my church to identify and pray for one person.
There are entire nations in turmoil right now, and the news often gives sweeping numbers of injured, displaced and dead. But within those statistics are individuals. And those individuals have families and friends and neighbors and acquaintances and coworkers. The atrocities these individuals are facing are echoing out, rippling through communities and piercing the hearts of strangers thousands of miles away.
When I think about the complexity of a human life, and all the experiences and people and memories that shape them, and when I think about the weight that grief adds to the body and the mind, I am reminded that each of these individuals are vibrant and multitudinous, and that their pain and loss deserve individual attention. Because it’s not universal pain, it’s not universal loss, there are individual circumstances that make it particularly heavy or hard, there are details we’ll never know that make these days long and this suffering all consuming.
It is a powerful thing to feel seen, to know that someone is praying for you, not just a group of people you are in. It is a powerful thing to be given hope, to be given strength, to be reminded that you matter and that you are loved.
Which is why I want to encourage us this holiday season to pray for one person.
While we know there are countless people who need prayer, try and imagine one person. An individual who needs help, who needs faith, who needs hope. You don’t have to know anything about them, you don’t have to know the exact prayer they need. Because that’s the powerful thing about prayer. It’s not about knowing every detail, it’s not about ensuring we do everything right, it’s about handing a situation over to God, handing an individual over to God, and asking that He make them feel seen, that He would put people in their life to give them hope, and that He would shine light into the darkest corners of their life.
I am praying for someone.
A person out there at their lowest. A person across the world who wakes every morning to destruction and loss. A person who can’t see the other side of this darkness.
I pray that they would know God sees them. That they don’t blend in or get lost in the shuffle, that they stand out in all their vibrant colors and that God sees them, hears them, and has plans for them.
I pray that he would draw them near and bring peace into their lives. I pray that they would know they are not numbers or statistics, but people that we are thinking about and praying for. I pray that faith finds them and feeds them and carries them forward to days full of joy and hope and love.
For those of us fortunate enough to be spending today in a spirit of celebration, I pray you too are surrounding by hope and joy and love, and that we’d all find a way to pass it on.
Happy Thanksgiving!