I’m remembering years ago when email still felt young and social media only existed in MySpace and that one thing with a name I can’t recall that had thousands of people from Brazil. I wasn’t yet saying everything out loud to my 1,698 friends/kind-of-friends. No. Especially prayer requests.

When I had prayer requests, I would type them into an email and send them to about 50 people that I actually knew. Whenever any of the 50 had requests, they’d hit “send,” too.

There’s that one time my younger sister was indirectly hit by lightening. And that other time a friend of a friend passed her real estate exam. There were anonymous ones, known to me but unknown to the rest of the group–breakups and other forms of massive disappointment and (mostly) mislabeled shame. Some things were best kept nameless, some pain and frustration were too deep to fully own.

We prayed. We believed in God for each other and ourselves. We touched and agreed via whatever magic makes email communication an actual thing.

I tend to use the word magic for anything wonderful that I don’t understand or haven’t tried to understand. Surely, I could learn how email actually works. But I’d rather save what little energy I have for other things like doing my hair and driving to coffee shops to work.

I need some magic. We all really need some magic these days.

There’s the right ankle I sprained a month ago. I need it to heal so that I can exercise…for my tummy tells me so. There’s the electrical work at the church. Why electricians aren’t built into churches, I don’t know. And there’s Rob Fuste whose lungs need to work and there’s his suffering family as they wait and watch and wait… There’s an anonymous one, too.

I don’t know that this is the priority order. In truth, I’d put Rob top of the list. If you only have capacity for one prayer, please choose him.

And may the magic of God’s incomprehensible grace guard our hearts and minds…