What Would you pray for if you were materially poor? What Moms ask for…

What do you pray for?

Now, imagine for a minute that you are materially poor.

Really poor.  

Like, making less than $25 per month poor, of which your rent costs you $12 per month, poor.

What if you were husbandless poor?  Living in a mud shack poor?  Without a social safety net poor?  Totally illiterate poor? At the bottom of the ladder poor?

Would poverty of that level change the way you pray?  Do you think you would pray for the essentials…or would you pray for more, much more?

I am currently writing Family updates for the families in the project, so the staff got a chance to ask them how they would like others to be praying for them…

And let me tell you…

I am blown away by their prayer requests…

Here is what these moms ask for prayer for…

1. Pray for my child’s health ( a prayer shared by many of the moms.)
2. Pray for my health.  (Some even added because I need my health to keep working so that I can keep providing).
3. Pray for our country’s economic crisis and our area’s economy.
4. Pray for my eyes…that they might be healed, so that I can work.
5. Pray that I can find permanent work when my daily labor job (that pays $1.75 US per day) finishes soon.
6. Pray for peace in my family.
7. Pray that I would have a house to live in.
8. Pray that God would give me my basic needs.
9. Pray for me as I return to Jesus.

Suddenly my prayers seem so very shallow.  Maybe yours, too?

There’s something about living in the mode that Jesus presents in the Lord’s Prayer of “Give us today our daily bread” that makes much more sense when that’s what you need – today’s bread, today.

There’s something about poverty that makes these women incredibly rich and amazingly wise.  Their prayers aren’t for riches or the lottery or success or power or fame or comfort.

In their poverty…they are rich.

They know what’s really important to ask for…  Much more than I do in my shallow prayers of wanting more and more.

As I was typing this, a song by Shaun Groves (which echoes the words of Proverbs 30 written by a mostly unknown guy named Agur) popped up in my playlist….

Maybe his prayer is a good place for me to start…

Please don’t give to me, wealth or poverty.

But God I ask only for enough.

Oh, Enough.  God, only just enough.  

Enough, Oh Enough.  God only, just enough.

So be it.  Amen.