The Hairdresser, the General Contractor and the Worried Mom......

I went to get a haircut last night at the same place I've been going since I moved to Williamsport. It is a really off the wall place called Elvira's. It is owned and run by a woman in her late forties....jet black dyed hair....very thin Italian woman....and very, very eccentric. The place is kind of haphazard...quite messy actually. They are none too particular about sweeping up the hair from the last customer....but, I've gone there since I moved here and I like her. Mary, her niece....a woman in her late thirties, works there too. They are the only two. They are friendly and warm and genuine. They know me by name and we've talked about all kinds of things while I've gotten my hair cut. They cut Matt's hair on a "regular" basis and on occasion they have cut and styled the girls hair. I forgot my glasses there last night and stopped today to pick them up. Beth's "MISSING" poster was on the front door. I gave it Mary last night....who was very concerned and teared up when I told her about Beth. That is the reaction I usually get from women who have children. Elvira wasn't there last night so when I went in today, I pointed to the poster and said, "She's mine"...and then a conversation ensued between me, and Elvira and a contractor who was in the shop and had just gotten his hair cut. He had a daughter who ran away to Philadelphia with a sleaze bag guy about 10 years ago....and we talked awhile. He told me about his daughter's story....and how he tried for months to find her, sneaking around houses, shining flashlights in windows. Finally, about 6 months after she went to Philly, she called him sobbing....asking him to please come and get her. His advice was not to wear ourselves out looking for Beth...but rather to pray for her. To pray for her protection and ask God to put a hedge of protection around her. Then he asked if he could pray for Beth. So the eccentric hairdresser, the worried mom and the general contractor joined hands and he prayed a heartfelt prayer for Beth. It was so very touching. It was very comforting. Just this impromptu moment standing with the hair from the previous few haircuts under our feet.

I don't know how prayer works....and I often wonder IF it works....but there are verses in scripture that assure us that it does. And Jesus prayed and taught us how to. Following is a quote from Preston Eby's Savior of the World series about prayer that seems to capture the gist of it.....

The prayers of the saints! Prayer is not a useless exercise, it is part of God's cosmic purpose. I don't pretend to understand it, but when Jesus was going away He said, "Up until now you have asked nothing in My name, from now on you will ask the Father in My name, and whatever you ask the Father I will do it." Ah, we have missed the importance of prayer in the redemptive and reconstructive and restorational purposes of God! Our prayers ARE important! Don't ask me to explain the mystery of the apparatus, but they are important. You'll find yourself praying, you'll find yourself desiring to pray, and that's the Holy Spirit urging you to do what is necessary to enable things to happen the way they are supposed to happen. There is a relationship between the decrees of God and the response of God's people! God created all things by a Word. God SAID, "Let there be ... and it was so." That's a CREATIVE WORD! Prayer is a participation in the creative Word of God, speaking the new creation into existence. It's a mystery I don't fully understand, but there are times when I have to pray, there are times when the altar of my soul is full of clouds of holy incense as I send up to God petitions, as I decree a Word, not for myself, but for others, and when I can't articulate them in English I send them up in an unknown tongue. And there is that deep inner consciousness that somehow I am participating in a great tableau and drama of history.