I remember when I was a young student reading about Mother Theresa; she was asked how she kept going doing the work that she did in Kolkata amongst the beggars and homeless. She said that she saw Jesus in the children deserted by their families, Jesus in the sick and starving, Jesus in the poor and homeless. When she saw Jesus in this way, she was really ministering to him by serving these people.

Being the ministering hands of Jesus and showing the love of God by caring for others comes with great cost but also with great reward.

prayer walking

Have you ever considered walking the ground and praying for the space where you work? Some time ago I and one of the people in our hospital prayer group decided to walk the ground of the Trust and pray over the space we inhabit as God's people. We wanted to ask God to be present everywhere in our hospital and to pray for God's presence to be there in tangible ways. It took us a while and we did it over a couple of weeks praying on each floor of the hospital. We asked God to fill the place with his presence and prayed for each of the specialist areas and each of the teams working on those floors.
I will never know what difference our prayer walk made but I know that it encouraged us!

need to pray for someone?

Sometimes it's a slight prompt in our inner being and often you don't even know the patient very well. What happens when God puts a patient on your heart to pray for, but you haven't really had a chance either to talk to them or they aren't able to tell you? That happened to me a few years back. There were two patients I had very little to do with, apart from settling them comfortably in their beds. One was unconscious and very ill and not expected to make it through the night; the other was extremely anxious and unable to communicate very well due to his dementia - he was very negative and very scared. I prayed for these two patients. The next day I could not have been more surprised. The unconscious lady was sitting up in bed completely transformed and was discharged home a few days later. The other patient sadly passed away peacefully that night.

I am thankful to God that I am not responsible for the answers to my prayers - just responsible for praying in the first place. God then takes care of the rest.

Sue Holcombe is a nurse and CMF's Associate for Whole Life Faith