Magnetic Prayers

I'm really grateful that the Lord has really given me a renewal in my prayer life over the last 4 weeks. About a month ago our youth pastor was preaching. Great guy. Wonderful heart. I don't remember a thing he said. Except in the conclusion to his sermon he quoted this verse. It was as if the Holy Spirit himself was enunciating it directly into my heart: "But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul." (Dt 4:29) I decided at that very moment that I would wake up early the next morning, skip breakfast, go to our church "prayer shack" and seek God. I thought I would do it for a week or so, but I can't stop. It has become the richest time of fellowship with the Lord that I have experienced in years. I can't tell you how grateful I am that God has put this craving in my heart to be in His presence again. It's a selfish thing really. I can't stop. I'm addicted.

Back in college (the 2nd one) I had a physics class in which I had to do an independent study project on magnetism. Fascinating things, those magnets. They pull on things, they push on things but there's literally nothing connecting them. What is this mystical invisible force attracting the positive and repelling the negative? The more you study it, the more mind-blowing it is. (Einstein once commented that it was his childhood fascination with a magnetic compass that set him on his life's course.)

Anyway, it turns out that each "permanent magnet" (like the ones attached to your fridge) is made up of tiny, microscopic regions called "domains." Each domain is perfectly aligned with it's own little north pole and south pole. You can magnetize a sewing needle by rubbing it with a permanent magnet. What is happening when you do that is that you are rotating all those little magnetic domains so they are aligning themselves in the same direction -- you're spinning all those little compasses around to point true north. And when they do -- bingo -- you've got yourself another permanent magnet. Well, it's called "permanent", but that's just a technical term referring to its "ferromagnetic" properties. It can lose its alignment, and it will over time. That's why, when you buy a good horeshoe magnet, it comes with a "keeper" -- it's a little bar that you place across the poles of the magnet and it helps preserve the strength of the magnet by completing the magnetic "circuit."

So the other day it occurred to me that the prayer shack has become my "keeper" in my efforts to keep every fiber in my body oriented towards True North.