Conversations

Friends,

I just wrote almost a full blog and then erased the entire thing cause I had a better idea. LOL. Probably shouldn’t have done that because there’s a save button. Anyways, here we are. It’s not going to be too long so bear with me. Y’all are actually the greatest for reading this.

I try to keep these less “preachy” and more just regular writing but I have to talk about prayer today. Prayer is the most powerful weapon we have and the hardest thing to be good at.

Lets define prayer: prayer is talking to the Guy who made us, it’s petitioning our requests to the Lord, it’s begging for souls to be won over from darkness, it’s a last resort for some, and it’s the first thing done for some. YOU, yes you, pray everyday. Even if you don’t call yourself a Christian or any other religion. All those times you’re “talking to yourself” yeah that’s prayer, you just don’t know who it’s directed to! So that’s a great start, now we have to understand why we pray.

We pray because Jesus prayed, mainly. We also pray because we believe that there’s someone out there listening. We pray because somewhere deep down inside our souls we know that we aren’t able to accomplish what we want to see done. Well what you may or may not know is that God is so able to do anything and He calls us to talk through life with him. He is our Father right? I like talk to my Dad so why wouldn’t I want to talk to my heavenly Dad?

Why is prayer so hard? I think that God is a concept that is so large and tough for us to wrap our heads around. This makes it really weird and awkward to talk to him. I sometimes feel like I’m talking to air, not a deity that encompasses everything in the known world. God is so big that it seems almost impossible for him to have a personal relationship with 7 billion people. The good news is that all those aforementioned things that make prayer hard are FALSE! God IS huge, but He still wants to talk to you and have a personal relationship with you. In fact, God wants you to pray to Him even if you’re not a “christian”. The awkwardness also goes away because as we begin to pray more we begin to know God more. It’s a pretty simple idea, the first time you talk to Joe in class it’s really awkward but it gets less and less awkward every time right?

Another reason why prayer is hard is because many times our prayers seem unanswered. If our prayers don’t roll over to what we were asking, it sure seems like they weren’t answered. This is a tough concept. God hears everything we ask Him and sometimes He doesn’t answer our prayers like we want Him to. When James and Peter were arrested by Ceaser the Jews were praying EARNESTLY for their lives. James was killed and Peter was saved by an angel. Why wasn’t James saved, too?  This seems really unfair. Peter went on to be arguably the most influential Christian of all time, becoming the first Pope and being the rock that God built His church on. God’s timing is perfect and His reasoning for everything is just and fair.

I encourage all of you to pray and to pray hard. It’s not easy and it’s not always fun either. Prayer isn’t the preparation for the battle, it is the battle. ( I didn’t come up with that quote.) It’s our greatest weapon and it can be as easy and having a conversation.

I also would ask you to pray for Nicaragua. They have had some pretty terrible earthquakes in the past week and it is beginning to look like bad news as far as more to come and volcanic activity. Pray for my summer there, that my heart would be prepared for the things I will do and the people I will meet.

Mucho Amor,

B-Rad

Waffle House Joy

Waffle House consists of some of the greatest things this earth has ever seen. For one, it has bacon. Bacon is good. Second, it has waffles. Now combine the two and some other delicious treats and you have what is quite possibly my favorite meal on God’s green earth. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, ‘Bradley, tell me what this famed meal is!’ Well today is your lucky day because the best meal you can possibly get at Waffle House is something that isn’t on the menu. It’s joy. Pure Joy.

“But Bradley, I thought you were talking about the All Star Breakfast with a waffle, white toast, eggs scrambled light with cheese, hashbrowns covered, and bacon.” Yes, that is what I was actually talking about. BUT, joy is seen and received by every costumer that goes into a 65 degree, dirty, and most likely failing health score Waffle House. I can’t remember the last time I stuffed my face there and wasn’t amazed at the joy my servers or the cooks had.

These may seem a strange combination of things to write about but I think that there is a mystery here. People wonder how it is the amazing employees have the stamina and strength to work a 14 hour day and still be so darn happy all the time. How do those cooks remember everything that the waitress seem to scream into what seems like busy ears?

I think what this boils down to is the false relation between money and happiness that our culture so adamantly throws upon us. We look at people who might not have a lot of money and assume that they did something wrong to put themselves in that situation. This may be true for a lot of people but I don’t think it’s fair to assume that for people. In my experience, the poorest people I have ever seen have had more joy than anyone that lives in my gated “American Dream” community.

I’ve been so lucky to spend a lot of time in the beautiful of Nicaragua and I’ve seen kids playing their hearts out screaming and laughing with something that we would throw in the trash. I can remember on numerous occasions giving little girls bracelets made out of rubber bands and they accept it like it was the featured bracelet on the cover of Vogue  magazine. I’ve seen mothers sweep the dirt as we walk into their homes, trying to make what they have look as nice as they can. They take pride in floors made of dirt. They take pride in rubber bands. We cower behind our cars that are dented and old. We feel poor when we don’t have a finished basement. We feel like a wedding ring for less than $5000 is cheap!

I’ve learned a lot of things from my Dad, and I’ve seen myself become more and more like him as I’ve grown up. One of the things my Dad does is sit at the bar at Waffle House and talk to the staff and make real relationships with the people he meets there. When he walks in the Waffle House in my home town everyone working knows him and says “Hey Brad, you want the usual?” I think that’s pretty cool. It’s cool because these folks are buying into the people they serve and I genuinely believe that it’s not to get a big tip. My dad has watched and become friends with countless employees and seen them work their tails off to accomplish their goals. He knows one young lady who works all day and takes classes all night so that she can be a nurse. He knows a cook that has been at the same Waffle House for as long as I can remember and they have become great friends.

So, I’ve been thinking about starting this sort of thing. Last week I went into waffle house by myself and sat at the bar and tried to get to know some folks. My server Niki was on the 13th hour of her shift and was still as bubbly as a sorority girl on bid day. She told me about her baby squirrels that she rescued (and was keeping in the back room, probably pretty sanitary). We talked about the regulars that come in and how they make her laugh and how they annoy her. I walked out of that restaurant feeling hopeful for people. I sometimes get bogged down about all the bad things in the world but I walked out that place and thought to myself ‘you know what, we all ought to be like waffle house people’.

I don’t know who’s going to read this and I don’t know everyones’ story but I do know that God’s love gives us great joy (Philemon 1:7). God also calls us to hang out with other people who are also doing life. Which is everyone, in case you forgot! We can’t forget to do this and help each other out (Hebrews 10:24-25) because we’re all sharing the same life waiting and praying for the day Jesus returns.

I leave you with this quote that some chick on the internet said, “You should eat a waffle! You can’t be sad if you eat a waffle!” That’s pure gold folks. Eat waffles and makes friends with the folks that cook those waffles.

Love and waffles,

Bradley “I spend way to much money at Waffle House” Carr