By Audrey Bauman

Philippians 4: 6 - 7 NLT

Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Those verses are favourite ones of mine. I think I started posting them on my bathroom mirror when I had my first daughter. She was a fussy baby who cried a lot day and night. I was a typical first mom who didn't know too much about young babies, and I was worried, wondering what I must be doing wrong. Wondering what might be wrong with her. Pacing way too much all the time with her over my shoulder. Those were the days when I started to pray about everything.

We all have a tendency to think we are doing okay. We plan our days well. We are competent at our jobs. We make tons of decisions - small and sometimes big - every day feeling that we are smart enough to make good decisions, or at least acceptable ones. I suspect we don't pray a lot during our days . We just live and do whatever we think is necessary.

When we meet a tough problem, then we might pray. Perhaps after we thought it all out ourselves? Or we asked people for advice? When do we actually pray?

"Don't worry about anything; instead pray about everything". Is that you? Is it me?

I will admit now that I'm older, I do pray more than when I was young. One advantage to being older is your life experience has taught you that things can be much more complicated than you thought. But how much do I pray? When I read the words, "pray about everything", that is not me. I tend to take time to pray in the morning about many people/situations. Then I go on with my day. I likely would pray during the day if something comes to mind that I know needs God's help.  But do I pray about everything? Close to everything?

My challenge for you and me today is to pray often. Be aware of God's presence many times during the day.

Is there a good reason for that challenge?

"Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.

His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus."

God's peace -   exceeds anything we can understand. Did you get that?  "Exceeds anything we can understand."

We live in turbulent times. President Trump is constantly changing his mind about what tariffs he will impose. In Windsor, we're worried about our jobs since we depend a great deal on shipping things to the United States, especially in the auto and vegetable sectors. We worry about the wars that are creating a lot of tension between allies. We worry about our personal budgets as cost seem to creep up all the time. We worry.

So I repeat the challenge today:

Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything.

Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 

Then you will experience God’s peace,

which exceeds anything we can understand.

His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Our song for today is Lord I Need You by Matt Maher.