The adhan
We had finished our tour of the Red Mosque (San Sofia) and the Blue Mosque in Istanbul when our guide took my husband and me to a hilltop café. While sipping apple tea and enjoying the view the call for prayer (the adhan) came from the many minarets silhouetted against the clear blue sky.
It made us mindful of our God.
Church bells
We had had an exhausting yet exhilarating day skiing with our adult children in a village called Kaltenbach in the Austrian Alps and were enjoying hot chocolate with marshmallows when church bells rang out the call to prayer across the valley. We joined the procession of people who emerged from their houses and walked across the snow to cram into the local church for midnight mass.
It was Christmas Eve.
My iPhone
I startled from my sleep early one morning as a text message buzzed its arrival on my phone. It was a call to prayer from Open Doors urging Christians to pray for fellow Christians in Northern Iraq. Then an email informed me of a call to prayer on our State Parliament steps for God’s intervention and rescue of the persecuted and marginalized people groups who are suffering.
Selective deafness
I knew a young mother who was too busy and tired to pray. She told God that she would pray when all her children were at school. When her children were all at school she went to work. She told God she would pray when they were adults and had left home. When she was an empty nester she filled her day being Grandma and doing ‘ministry’. She told God she would pray when her grandchildren went to school. Now her grandchildren are all at school … Hmm! Do you get the picture?
There is no perfect time or situation in life to pray.
The enemy deceives us into inactivity by spreading lies about why’ now’ is not a good time.
The call to prayer is now
.
‘Be joyful always, pray at all times, be thankful in all circumstances. This is what God wants from you in your life in union with Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18
So whatever your age, no matter what your life is like today, God is calling all women (and men) to prayer.