Today’s Prayer to Passage will be from the book “Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey” by Jane Goodall.

Today I pray, “Dear God, When I speak what I know with those who try hardest to bring me away from what I know, I do not become apologetic. It is here where I most have You with me. If the purpose of my Relationship with You is to have others believe it, I am missing the point entirely. And I offer the same to their attempts to assign Our relationship. It is this assigning of a relationship with You that is the missing of a mark. I tend Our Garden with You, and in so being, Our perfect growth. Amen.”

Following my prayer, I held the closed book in my hands and opened it to this passage:

“Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference. Each one of us must take responsibility for our own lives, and above all, show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other.”
—JANE GOODALL

I received this text from my mom upon typing this passage: “Our relationship has always been extra special. I don’t think there has been a topic that we have ever not been able to find some common ground. Besides, you’re so smart. I am always learning from you. Love you more!” (Kiss-face emoticon)

Timing is becoming cherished and amplified and noticed. I sent my mom a birthday card this year with a cartoon drawing of a bunny on a bike. There was a capital A on the left of the card’s cover and a capital B on the right. There was a dashed line drawn in a swirl of loop-de-loops between the A and B. And the bunny on the bike was somewhere on the dotted line, in the center. She texted me to say that this card symbolizes her. Because she got a bike for her birthday. From my dad. I had no idea she got a bike for her birthday. I was tickled.

Here is another good one: One morning last week, as I was getting ready to go to work, I was praying in silence. And I told God that my 2010 calling, which I call “The Biggest Audience” because I haven’t come up with a better title for it, is my favorite calling. Of all of my callings from God, being chosen to be viewed by Heaven 24/7 from age 33 to age 40 so that spirits may view a regular life (that’s mine) with a regular person’s (that’s me) permission and make their own Heavenly informed decisions about whether or not to return to live another life on earth – there is a free will theme here – is my favorite calling. The Biggest Audience, the freedom of it all, is my favorite calling. And then I said to God in silence, “I’ll probably get to work and the first passcode for the day will be the word favorite, justly, so I may receive Your confirmation that it is Your favorite calling, too.” I really said this in my prayer.

At my job, I confirm passcodes with my colleagues for security purposes – approximately 80 times a day. And there are thousands of possible passcodes, which generate randomly. And it wasn’t until I was saying the words, “The confirmation word is favorite” that I realized the word “favorite” was my first passcode of the day. I had forgotten I had said the prayer about one hour prior… until I was reading that one…confirming…word. That was a smiling moment for me. A big smile. How does one work another eight hours in a job that seems out of place with all of this when a confirmation like that is received? My co-workers could say, “Addi, you’re so upbeat! It makes my day.”

And how am I to respond? “Yep! God just confirmed I’m inspiring babies to be born!” I mean, it doesn’t exactly blend into their recaps of last night’s episode of ‘The Walking Dead’ in a Monday morning, corporate office setting. I kid.

As blessed as all the other callings are to me, The Biggest Audience is my favorite. God has given me something big with my callings. I love the Prayer to Passage blog; I love that God guided me to take a Spiritual Gifts test in 2008 — with which I received an unanticipated revelation of a score: 100% Faith and 100% Prophecy. My Spiritual mentor that year was a pastor. He volunteered to interpret my Spiritual Gifts, the way the results may be cultivated to fit one gift with another for a purpose.

I hadn’t even heard of a Spiritual Gifts test before 2008. And the questions were randomly arranged, so I certainly didn’t rig my answers. My Spiritual mentor played a pivotal role. Over a cup of coffee at a small-town cafe where he pulled up for the meeting on his motorcycle, that pastor of a little white church in the countryside of rural Minnesota changed history. He saw the 100% Faith and the 100% Prophecy on a simple sheet of paper. He sat for a moment in silence, nearly grimacing over what to say in response. He looked up from the test results, having seen all of the other gifts and percentages like an MIT, Harvard, Oxford algorithm for the possibility of saving the planet.

And he said this: “You received 80% in Intercessory Prayer. With Faith and Prophecy, I highly recommend that you Google Intercessory Prayer and incorporate it into your life as soon as possible.” I’m not making this up. He really said that.

And I love the thought of, “How many lives did that pastor save because of the prayers that I have now said every day for the past eight years?”

Yet my favorite is, “How many babies are being born and bringing joy to the hearts of people all around the world because I said Yes, God! to God’s request of The Biggest Audience six years ago?”

Yes, these are big questions. Isn’t that what life makes available to us? The opportunity to say, “Yes, God!” To say yes to lives and the living and the not yet living? To say yes to it all? This is my favorite answer.