Scripture: James 5:16 (The Message)
Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with.

Thought for the Day: We are the church at least in part because there is power in a loving community and their prayers. When we become church, we join together as we are, with all the glorious imperfections that make us human. Acceptance of people for who they are is one of the key messages of the Gospel. And as we accept each other unconditionally in church, welcoming all who walk through our doors as an equal brother or sister in Spirit, we then go out as people of God, able to accept others with unconditional love, too. Hopefully, people of faith set an example of tolerance, love, and willingness to listen to each other’s confessions when we all invariably mess up once in awhile.

When we pray together, it does create a force to be reckoned with. As James explains prayer though, it is not a way to manipulate God, or a form of magic that somehow creates the material things you desire. Rather, prayer is what makes us whole, what helps reconcile us to God, and in those moments of intense Divine connection, we resonate with the energy of the entire universe. And that is a powerful force, indeed.

Prayer: O God of endless imagination, I pray you ignite my soul with the energy to become a peaceful, loving, and compassionate person. May all my prayers help unite humanity in the proclamation of your ceaseless creative and reconciling activity in our lives. Amen.