A few years ago a little girl from Poland moved into our street a few houses down from me. She and her mom are renting a basement in one of the somewhat posh houses in our neighbourhood. She couldn't speak Danish and her mannerisms were a bit strange, so the other kids would not play with her. At our monthly dinner parties with some surrounding houses the other neigbours complained that she would sometimes go into our front yards and just start playing with our kids' toys as if they were her own. Most neighbours would shoo her away. Not so me. I grew up as an odd child myself, an only child born to old parents, so I also wore strange clothes and lacked social skills. So I treated her like a friend when I bumped into her in my garden. Running a B & B means I spend a lot of time outside hanging laundry on the line, taking it off and folding it. Not the most exciting occupation, so I welcomed Mona's company. Dave scrounged the basement and found a few toys that Andreas had grown out of. She was very thankful. It was obvious, for example, that she had never owned a puzzle before, as a wooden puzzle designed for four-year-olds kept her occupied for a long time. Dave and I also played a simple board game with her one lazy Saturday summer afternoon when she had been here about a year.

Once when we had a church party in our yard I had invited her and her mom, our church being so international anyway. But the mother told her off that day for joining our party and when we went to her door to urge her to come, the mother seemed very fearful, almost hostile, and did not want to join us. I hear other neighbours telling Mona to leave their yard, not to follow them on her roller skates when they are walking their dog etc., so over the years I have tried to take a different approach and be friendly because I figure she might not have many friends.

Anyway, Mona's Danish has improved over the years, her clothing seems more fashionable now and she is a beautiful little girl, probably about 10. I still never see her with any friends, but from time to time she still visits with me in my garden and tells me about new clothes, trips to Poland etc. I don't mind her company.

The other day I came home from a busy day at the office and crashed on the couch for a few minutes, checking my mail before having to clean rooms upstairs. The summer season can really stretch me, it is tiresome to come home from work and have to start work. So I crashed for a few minutes. Then the doorbell rang. It was Mona. "I was wondering if you can come out and play?". That's when I started my lecture. "I am a grownup and grownups don't play, because we have to work in offices and clean houses. I don't ever have time to play, so I don't want you to ring my doorbell another time and disturb me, because I am very busy. I don't mind talking to you when I am outside in my garden, but I don't want you to come to my door and disturb me. I am an adult, you know, you need to find kids to play with". She apologized, shrugged her shoulders and left. And I started my cleaning upstairs.

That's when it hit me. Jesus said something about our responses to children. Something about receiving them like we would receive him. Something even about becoming like little children to receive the kingdom. I think this is to be understood literally, but I also think hanging out with children helps us loosen up. Children just crawled up on Jesus' lap. Pharisees asked him complicated religious questions, cynically and analytically. I think we adults need to hang out with children to lighten up. We get so caught up in typing important case files and dusting and vacuuming. I think I missed an invitation from Heaven that day. It would have probably done me good to toss a ball around for a few minutes before heading on to the next important point on my crowded to-do-list.

A former boss gave a speech at a company Christmas party a few years back. He had had a bit to drink, so he started speaking about me towards the end. "You Solvej, you are so naive, it is almost like you are a child" he said. The others chuckled, but I knew he liked me, so I took it as a compliment. I want to have the heart of a child. A heart that believes the best about people, a heart that trusts, a heart without walls and sediment left from years of let-downs and disappointments. I was reminded of that again that afternoon a couple of weeks back while fluffing pillows, reflecting on my serious and important adult speech minutes earlier. To help us keep childlike hearts God sometimes sends us children to play with. Do we turn them away? We might turn Him away in the process....

A handful of people from our church just attended a Bill Johnson healing school in Malmö last week. I wanted to go, but this is such a busy month in my B & B that I am spending hours a day making beds and doing laundry, so I just couldn't get away. But I almost regretted my choice yesterday in church as the group shared their excitement about what God did. My usually laid-back friends were shouting and jumping with excitement as they had seen cartledge in knee caps formed, injuries healed etc. God is good and it seemed that they had managed to tap into an extra surge of His goodness at that conference. It made me hungry for more and encouraged me to press on in my own pitiful but determined quest to flow in healing.

Apparently the rings from that conference are spreading in the water. This is a translated blog from a famous Swedish singer who has thousands of blog followers. This is what she experienced on the train Saturday:

"Sitting on the train headed home to Stockholm something very strange just happened in the seats right behind me!!

A young guy is sitting next to an elderly woman and I can't help eavesdropping as he talks about his strong faith in God. Excitedly he describes how he really feels that God lives in him and how much God loves everyone. The lady tells him about her life, mostly about the intense pain in her shoulders. They hurt so much that she can't even blowdry her hair. Suddenly the guy asks if he can pray for the lady?

She says yes - but I can hear a bit of apprehension in her voice....
Then he lays his hands on her shoulders and starts praying.
He prays that she would know His love and that the pain in her shoulders would go away.
When he is done he asks her if she feels any differently?
"NOW you mean?" asks the lady, somewhat apprehensive.
"Yes" he replies "Try to lift your hands up in the air right now"
She does and now the strange thing happens. She lifts her hands high above her head and does not really seem to grasp how she did it. "I haven't been able to lift my arms this high for years" she says.

I don't want to sit there and stare but I must admit that I was very fascinated by the whole scenario that took place right before my eyes.

A little while later the guy got up and offered everyone in that traincar who felt sick or had any kind of pain to pray for them. He said that his hands were tingling and that seemed to be the sign from God that someone else in that train car needed help.

Apparently nobody was ill in this train car. Or perhaps it was just because they did not dare or want to..... we are a little bit scared of anything "Christian" in this country ... aren't we?

If he had offered that on a train in the US there would have probably been many lining up hoping for a miracle! We Swedes are too cowardly to even dare try I think. If I had suffered from something I would have let him pray for me! What have you got to lose I am thinking.... It was a really nice prayer that he prayed, and he didn't talk in tongues or get hysterical like you see them do sometimes on TV. You know, they push on peoples' heads and scream so loud that people get pushed over and fall. I would NOT have gone for testing that!!
But this guy was easygoing, happy, positive and had a strong faith that he could heal people (and it was actually proved that he could!) ... he just wanted to reach out a hand on that train car to see if anyone would take it.
The little old lady was brave enough, but nobody else.
So my question is - what would you have done?!
Do you believe that miracles can actually happen?"
-----
I Solvej am most encouraged by this story from a lady who just happened to be on that train and report on how natural the supernatural can be. It encourages me to keep praying for the sick no matter how low my "battering average" of actual healings is. I really am a chicken in that department. It is easy to pray for people who come for prayer on Sundays after church, but it is entirely different to reach out and volunteer to pray when talking to a stranger or non-Christian friend.

I did do it on the rainy sidewalk on our quiet street a few months back when a neighbour told me about a broken shoulder that just wouldn't heal up. I swallowed a toad (Danish figure of speech) and asked if I could pray for her right there. She said yes, so I did and then there was a bit of an awquard silence and we went our separate ways after some small talk. I said to God that since I had finally gotten with it He could have done something --- a visible healing or even a ray of sun shining on her head. But the sidewalk remained grey that day and I felt stupid and a bit disappointed. Well last week she told me that this prayer had meant a lot to her. She wasn't healed but she said that the blessing I had prayed over her that day had made a difference and all through the different treatments and sick time she had felt the strength of not being alone. That was so encouraging to hear from her, because the enemy had of course used her "silence" to tell me that I was no good at praying for the sick and should lie low in that department and move in other gifts. But this story of a friend who was NOT healed but encouraged and this wild story from an ordinary train on an ordinary day in Sweden encourages me to keep at it. God is awesome and able to heal! In planes, trains and automobiles .... and on grey sidewalks outside my house.

It takes four minutes to soft-boil an egg. It takes five minutes to play a game of on-line Scrabble. It takes six minutes to prepare a bag of microwave popcorn. And it takes seven minutes to hard-boil an egg. So we are back to the egg. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? That is one important question, but another one I was introduced to in high school when I first heard the concept of existentialism is: Are you what you spend your time on or are you something or someone else?

I don't spend a lot of time praying. I know I should pray, and after I have prayed I always feel more grounded and lighter around my heart, it is as if prayer makes me more me. Strange, because a prayer that John the Baptist prayed was that there would be more of Jesus and less of him. I pray that too, sometimes, when I get fed up with mulling over my own endless circuit of pocket-size troubles and decide to start focusing on Jesus instead. It is sort of like an alignment of your wheels, it is as if I find my bearings and become more ..... me. I have also seen a lot of answers to prayer during the thirty years that I have followed Jesus. Like we sing in a worship song: "No one else can touch my heart like you do". It's true. God's loving gaze penetrates my heart, soaks it in love, brings the muck to the surface and washes it off.... prayer is a wonderful thing.

Hours can go by during which I do not pray. But Sunday I was reminded again of how little it takes. I saw once again how God can answer even a one-minute prayer powerfully.

I was scheduled to do children's church and I love the kids in our church, I have done childrens' church at least once a month for the last 25 years. It keeps me young. I came to know the Lord as a child myself, so I know children are just as much targets of God's love as adults.

But Sunday I was just wasted. I had held my 5oth birthday party for all my female friends and we had had a blast. It was such a marvelous day and I felt so rich to have that kind of friends, the high of it kept me awake all night, I just couldn't sleep. But I had to get up and clean up and do dishes and entertain overnight guests AND clean the rooms in my Bed and Breakfast for the next group of guests due that afternoon. And then do childrens' church. Just thinking the thought made me want to roll over and sleep.

Just as the coffee break in church was starting my friend leaned over and prayed for me. Spontaneously, without warning, at first I thought she was talking to me as she hugged me, but then I realized she was asking God to strengthen me and bless the kids in the group that day. I don't think the prayer took more than one minute, but it made a big difference. Right away I felt motivated and strengthened ... and thankful that someone cared enough to pray. Several new kids came that day, we had a big turnout, and some big boys who can sometimes give me grey hairs listened attentively and gave good contributions to the story. First-time visiting parents commented on how good it was. I could sense the presence of God there in the midst of puppetry and fun. He was speaking to some young hearts. And it was not because of my hours of preparation, but because of a one-minute prayer of a friend who noticed I could use some help.

So go ahead and boil that egg, play that Scrabble - but realize that there is a special place near the heart of God where you can make a difference - even with a one-minute prayer.