David prayed this morning that “everything will go well for music class.” I was struck by this, because I know he’s imitating a pattern of prayer, and his prayer is reflecting the priorities he’s heard.
Really, is the most important thing to me that music class will “go well”? If by going well, we mean God will be glorified, regardless of what happens, if we are able to share God’s love with the unsaved women from the community, as well as Christian hospitality for my sisters in Christ, then so be it. But I don’t think that’s what we mean when we say, “help everything to go well.”
We’ll be having a conversation about this later in the afternoon, after I have some conversation about it with God.
(Forgive me if this comes through multiple times. I tried twice and got a window saying the page was taking too long or something.)
In church on Sunday our pastor read from a passage which used a phrase something like “go well,” but I can’t remember what it was (I do remember his main text, but not this one — I should have written it down). But it made me think of this post. I used a Bible search program (http://www.biblegateway.com/keyword/) and searched for “go well,” “went well,” and “be well.” Those kinds of phrases are used often, so I don’t think there is anything wrong per se with praying that way, but, as you indicated, it’s good to teach what we mean by “well.” Too often when we pray or hope things “go well” we mean the logistics — that it won’t rain, that people will arrive safely, that everything will go as planned — rather than the weightier matters you mentioned.