I heard this commercial on the radio for Head and Shoulders: "You don't have to live up to your potential as long as your hair does." What an encouraging message!  Slack off, eat more ice cream, get carpal tunnel from playing too many video games.  It doesn't matter as long as you have nice hair. For what it's worth, I didn't know my hair had potential.

You might remember having a car with a power antenna for the radio.  As a kid, I thought that was the coolest thing.  It was like, "Where did that come from?"  Of course, when the antenna was down (or broken off), the quality of the reception went way down. In the same way, prayer raises our spiritual antenna.  When we diligently seek God in prayer, our spiritual antenna goes up and we begin seeing things that we didn't see before.  In some cases, they may not have been there before.  More often, they were there all along but we didn't notice them until we started praying. So, if you want to see and seize more spiritual opportunities for growth and impact ... begin praying.  And watch your antenna go up.

In our last Friday morning men's group, we asked for requests and closed in prayer.  The fellow leading the prayer is an engineer and one of the requests was for help in running a half-marathon on Sunday.  So he prayed for God's help in running a half-marathon, all "13 miles."  And then he corrected himself, "13.1 miles, that is." When we joked about it later, he said, "I wouldn't want to be responsible if he got hurt in the last tenth of a mile."

One of the most stirring lines in all of Scripture comes when Esther is challenged by Mordecai to intercede on behalf of her fellow Jews.  The risk?  It might potentially cost her life.  Despite the fact that she is young and only recently married to the king (who has issued the decree to exterminate the Jews), Esther sends these words back to Mordecai: Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai:  "Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish." (Esther 4:15-16). Wow!  Kind of makes your hair stand up.

For our communion meditation tonight, I spoke of how John F. Kennedy's challenge to the nation sounded like something spoken nearly 2,000 years before. Kennedy: "Ask not what your country can do for; ask what you can do for your country." Jesus: "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." The way of a Christ-follower is to choose a divine path over our own preferred route.