Rainy Days and Mondays

They don't always get me down. In fact, when it's been 90+ degrees outside for the past several days, a bit of rain can be a very welcome thing. As for Mondays ... well, I have a little secret. Monday is "ladies night" around here.

Adam and I both belong to prayer groups. He meets with the boys on Wednesday nights and I meet with the girls on Mondays. My group recently celebrated our fifth anniversary of meeting weekly to pray for one another. In honor of this milestone, I designed and framed a print highlighting our years together and as a little reminder of why we do what we do.

The text is a little hard to read in this picture. Surrounding the numbers in each circle, I've counted down:

5 years together
4 friends joined*
3 weddings celebrated
2 babies born
1 purpose

Along the right edge of the inner circle are our names and dates of the first prayer meeting and the fifth anniversary.

The words on the left are my paraphrase of the prayer passage in James 5:

Is anyone suffering? Pray for her.
Is anyone joyful? Sing praises.
Is anyone sick? Call the church to pray.
The prayers made in faith will heal the sick. If you have sinned, you will be forgiven.
Pray for one another so you may be healed. Confess sins to each other.
The prayer of a righteous woman is powerful and can accomplish much.

We haven't always met on Mondays. We used to meet on Tuesdays, then Thursdays, but when we've talked about it, the group consensus seemed to be that it's nice to start out the week with a fresh bath of prayer.

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*In the way of being complete honesty, the four of us who are currently part of the group have not all been together five years. Three of us started out five years ago and we had a different fourth member for nearly a year and a half until she deserted us for a snazzy new job out of state (just kidding, my friend!). Our current fourth member joined us about a year later.