By Pastor Rob Norris

First of all, I ask you to pray for everyone. Ask God to help and bless them all, and tell God how thankful you are for each of them.                                                                                                                 1 Timothy 2:1

In November 1970, at the height of tensions in Vietnam, a pair of college students launched a campaign to bring awareness to the plight of American POWs and MIAs. Their plan was to create inexpensive metal bracelets, each bearing a soldier’s name and the date of his capture, and distribute them across the country as reminders for the average citizen.

Sharon Denney, now a 40-something college admissions counselor, remembers sending off her$2.50 for one of those bracelets in the early ’70s. Hers was etched with the name of First Lieutenant Ralph Galati, whose Air Force jet had been shot down in North Vietnam. Galati suffered through a year-long ordeal of torture and deprivation, including more than two months of solitary confinement.

But back in her hometown of Morrow, Georgia, young Sharon Denney was praying for Galati–for his safety and for his release or rescue.

Many years passed before Sharon came across her POW bracelet again while going through somethings in her parents’ home. A few Internet searches and phone calls later, shehad not only learned of Galati’s release in March 1973 but had also found his home phone number. And when she was finally able to make contact with him, the former POW told her that she was one of more than a hundred he had heard from over the years–men and women, boys and girls, who had worn his bracelet, had remembered his suffering and had prayed, prayed, prayed for their prisoner soldier.

Prayer knows no boundaries of time or space, no limits of age or distance. Prayer is simply our link to the heart of God and to people’s lives all over the world. Never underestimate what prayer can do in the short run or the long haul. Don’t give up. Keep praying.

Live it:
Why don’t we pray more as individuals and as a couple? Who haveyou been forgetting to pray for?

Pray:
Take turns bringing some requests before God today for people who seem to be facing impossible situations.

The Crossings Church meets Sunday mornings at 10:00 am at River Heights Intermediate School, 7227 Scholar Way, Eastvale, CA. Trusting and believe with you!