Ron’s prayers always, always begin with gratitude. No matter the object of his current prayer--no matter the gravity or urgency of the requests he has to lay before God-- he always begins with the things he’s thankful for. His evening prayers almost invariably begin with thanking God for a “fun day”. Fun. Fun is a high priority in Ron’s life. He looks for it everywhere. If he can’t find it in the natural course of events, he creates it. But he always gives God the credit for it because it is one of the great blessings in his life.
Sometimes, when I hear him praise God for the fun in a day, I have to do a mental recap to see if I can pinpoint the fun he is referring to. Often I find I would have thanked God for a pleasant day or a peaceful day or a productive day but, for Ron, it’s almost always a fun day. I love this. It cheers me and challenges me.
Last Tuesday evening when we were praying together, I was especially listening for the “fun” in his prayer. We had spent the day (from noon to 5:30pm) at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, seeing a variety of oncologists to discuss my upcoming mastectomy. The five hours could have been described as informative, but surely not as fun. Add to that the fact that we finally got out of there just in time to fight rush hour traffic on near empty stomachs to get back across the lake to our home—you get the idea.
So Ron began his prayer: “Father, thank you for a good day. Thank you for medical expertise and our access to it…..” How perfectly fitting--it was a very good day!
