Praying Penny Pincher

Are you feeling discouraged as you listen to the news, money being thrown here and there to help stimulate the economy, but "every day" folks like us not having a clue how it will affect us in the future? Hearing about some of that money going toward million dollar bonuses and wishing you could have just a few thousand sent your way? Family members unemployed and struggling to make ends meet?

I think one of the best penny-pinching tips I can share is to pray. Not just random prayers, but connected focused prayer to the Creator of all things, God, the one that we learn about in the Bible. Let me share something personal with you...it's not uncommon for me to wake up in the morning and have "worry" thoughts flood my mind. Will my son get his job back again? Will my husband be able to learn the new skills required at the new job he just started? What can I do to help bring in some extra money? That added to the concerns of most Baby Boomers...aging parents, grieving parents that have passed on, concern for now-adult children who are trying to make ends meet, concerns over the future...will there be a such thing as "retirement" for my husband...and on and on the list can go if I let it. What to do, what to do. Well here's what I do, and sometimes it takes all the energy I can muster at that time of the morning, but it's so worth it...I remember the words of Jesus in Matthew 6, or read them:

"....do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

What great and hope-filled promises! Each day will bring with it new challenges, the last part of the passage tells us, but each day, the solution is the same. So why do we get ahead of ourselves?

So I commit each one of the things that are worrying my mind to prayer, give my worries to God. It is something I'm working on doing on a regular basis throughout the day...to help me to remember to pray, I've done something practical...set my cell phone reminder alarm to go off 3 times each day, and whatever worries may have been tumbling through my mind during the past few hours, once again are turned over to Him.