August 2021 Mobile Monthly Mission

Copyright 2021 Kat Silverglate, Founder

We’d been involved with this international legal organization for many years now. While the size made it impossible to know everybody, we’d spent years travelling to annual conventions and mid-year meetings with our son in tow. Each trip became a combined vacation/networking/continuing legal education adventure. It happened slowly, but eventually, these folks became like family to us. They’d seen our son grow from kinder to college, invited us to their homes, celebrated our victories and mourned our losses. By 2013, we had many lifelong friends in the group.  Even the members we didn’t know well or even yet, felt somehow like family.

About twelve years into the journey, my husband and I served on the Convention Planning Team. I’m not sure who shared it or how it came on my radar screen, but I remember hearing something like this during one of the meetings: A member’s baby boy has stage 4 cancer. I didn’t know them, but it hit me the way news like that hits you -- that’s just horrible! 

Members gave blood and did other amazing things, but that feeling of helplessness and “I wish I could do more” lingered.  The question, “what if this was my son?” wouldn’t leave me alone. So I took a handful of purple rubber bracelets with the name of the cancer foundation the parents had formed and 

decided to give them away to friends who might pray. The truth was, if this was my son, I’d want the whole world to stop and pray.  To think about his journey.  To carry him with me. To carry me.

Like most, I prayed when I or those I loved had needs. But total strangers? Or for people I didn’t know very well? Sure, I’d lift up a prayer when they were on a list or when I was moved by news of a people-group suffering or when someone asked specifically.  But sustained prayer for a stranger? I know people like that. Prayer warriors. That really wasn’t me.

Fast forward now a few years. It’s 2019. I’m desperately in need of prayers. My mom is dying. Starvation. Anorexia is winning.  I constantly feel like I need to do more to help her, but I can’t. There isn’t more. We’ve done all we know to do. And we’ve prayed ourselves silly. I want the world to stop and pray. To carry her.  

It’s March.  Shortly before I go to a writing conference, I have this whisper of a thought about that little boy.  I’d prayed for years on and off.  Followed his Mumma’s blog and gotten to the point with his story where I knew he was doing much better. This thought about him seemed to come out of left field. I’d follow up later.

The conference is in a town I’ve never visited. Between my mother’s illness and my only son’s wedding in a few months and things happening at the event, I hit a moment of total saturation. I can’t absorb one more thing. I need to be alone.  So I run across this huge empty field toward three crosses planted at the edge of a lake. As I near the edge, I hear “Hallo!” in a bubbly Scottish accent.  I try to avoid the stranger, to no avail.

She’s at a different conference, outside writing in her journal.  I tell her a little about what’s going on and conclude with:

“God is so very good.”

She matches my declaration. “Oh, I know He is, my son had stage-4 cancer and he’s doing really well.”

I have this fleeting moment of familiarity, but it passes.  The longer we talk, the more this familiarity returns. 

“This can’t be his mother,” I tell myself.  When the 3rd or 4th fact is just too bizarrely similar to ignore, I ask for her son’s name.

She says it.

It’s him.

She’s his mom. The one writing all those updates.

I’m beyond undone now.  Apparently God decided to send this stranger in the flesh to this empty field to give me a live update.

“I’ve been praying for your son for years,” I tell her. 

“What?” she says incredulously.

After lots of trying to put it all together, we embrace. Stranger friends.    

God transforms strangers into friends. James 2:23. Ultimately, His undeniable presence convinces us of His friendship. Stranger prayers simply bring us close to the Lord. We’ve been the stranger, haven’t we?  Far away from others.  From God.  We crave friendship. The friendship of those who will carry us to Him in prayer. But more, we crave the friendship of God.

Our Mission this Month: When God puts someone you don’t know very well on your mind, will you pray? Your mission pack has all the equipment you’ll need to get started, and then some! If the curiosity is killing you and you’d love a mission pack, please contact us and we’ll get one out to you while supplies last.  Perhaps you are the stranger in need of prayer or you’d like us to join you in prayer for a stranger.  Send in that pre-addressed envelope that came with your mission pack.  We’ll be praying stranger prayers all month long!