Prayer and laughter

24th July 2013

A very interesting but mixed day. Started with the weekly staff meeting at which we debriefed about VBS amongst other things.

Then in the afternoon I met a church member who had asked to meet to have a pastoral chat. Without going into too much detail, the gentleman said he struggled with praying, with God seeming to answer some prayers and not others and also with God allowing some people to die despite prayers.

I assured him he was not alone and that I too struggled with prayer and in fact always felt I had not been gifted with the gift of prayer unlike some people who seem to be such amazing "pray – ers". I suggested he reads Philip Yancey’s book “Prayer: does it make any difference?” as I had found it very helpful.

We went on to have a great conversation about all kinds of stuff. But I was honoured that the gentleman felt he could trust me enough

In the evening Anne and I met a friend from church and headed down to Charlotte to a comedy club called The Comedy Zone. Our friend regularly goes there and she had been given some tickets for that evening. The evening started with an open mike spot and 3 out of the 4 comedians were awful but the 4th (a woman) was OK. After that the warm up comedian came on. Marty Simpson. He was very good. Totally clean and he did some great stuff about churches. We spoke to him afterwards and he said to our friend that he would come to Fairview. I told him about Greenbelt and he was keen to find out more.

Have a look at his routine here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3Cp3bTSfDo

Following him was an older comedian called Gerry Farber. He was good but for me Marty Simpson was the star of the show.

A very enjoyable evening though.